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Western Front 



By 
GEORGE W. BLANK 

Formerly with America's First Army in France 

and Belgium 



GERMAN CRUELTIES 
In France and Belgium 




Class 


^57C 


Book 


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Copyright ]^^^ 



COEfl^IGHT DEPOSm 



ON THE 
WESTERN FRONT 



BY 

GEORGE W. BLANK 

Formerly with America's First Army in France 
and Belgium 



GERMAN CRUELTIES 
IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM 



Tlie puhlishinfT of this book is my chosen ''after 
the war livelihood. " This book will be sent by mail. 

Any assistance rendered to promote the sale of this 
book will be appreciated. 

GEO. W. BLANK 

DETROIT, MICH. 



Copyrighted 1919 by George W. Blaak 



CONTENTS ■^.^0\ ^^ 

rj[^ Page 

Ko-eword TTT ... 1 

Fditorlal ; ; ; ; 2 

What an Evacuation Hospital Is 3 

Hrief Hlitorv of the J>anco-German War of 1870 4 

To William the Damned \ , 5 

The .Sfh Fv.Tcuatlon Hospital Leaves Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., for the North, March 1st, 1918. ..... 6 

Ho<!pltal Training In the Xoi-th 6 

Th» Beirlnnine of Ou"- Ovf-r Sea .Tourney 7 

Oil- irHval at thp Port of Prest, France 8 

Ou'' Perilous Voyase Across the .\tlantic 9 

.KX Pontma^cn PSTacks. France 10 

I eavlne for the Front 10 

Our .\rrlval at F*rauthoy, France 10 

Afovinc to the Front 11 

At the F'-ont 11 

KX Pery Mapneial. France 12 

At T.aterte and Molo 14 

.■\rrival at Chateau Thierry 15 

jlv Ooneral Pershing 16 

.*t Vllle'>5-rotte'-ets. France 17 

Our Arrival at Souilly and Vill-^Sur-Conscance, France 18 

At Co\'pe'"ly and T a-Venve. France 19 

Gerpi^'n .■\tt(lu''e in Poca'd to Peace Talk 21 

^Ty Per^onnl Vi^ilt to the Deistroyed City of Rhelms, France 21 

Arrival at Corniheck. Beleium 22 

Pa««in£T Thfough Xo Man's Land 22 

Arrival at Staden. Beleium 22 

The Herman Fxploriing Pencil 23 

My Personal Visit to the Old City of Rrtiges. Belgium 23 

ATy Personal Visit to the Destroyed City of Vnres (Fpray), Belgium 24 

The Great German Gun Emplacement at Stadei;i, Belgiuin 24 

-At Malo and Dunki'-k, France 25 

Our Ari-ival at Le-Havre. France T 26 

Farewell to France 26 

Honipward Bound 26 

Our Recent ion at Xew York City 26 

At Camp T'pton. Long Island 27 

Discharged 27 

Mustered Out at Camp Sherman. Chillicothe, Ohio 27 

Cony of General Order in France 28 

Foes' Vengeance 28 

Foreword — Conquest and Kultur 29 

Aim's of the Germans In their Own Words 31 

The ^^is«ion of Germanv 31 

War as Part of the Divine Order 34 

Expansion to the Southeast 38 

Subordination of France 39 

German .Atrocities — Pan-Germanism and .America 43 

What the Germans Wanted to Do In America — Bottom Page 44 

The Day Dawns 46 

German War Practice* and German Policy of Frightfulness 48 

F>ishlfulness .Advocated hv German Generals 49 

Kaiser's "Hun" Speech in 1000 49 

German Government Reversion to Barbarism 50 

The System of Frightfulness 51 

Statement of Von Blssing 51 

Belgian Warning of Daneer 52 

German ^^■hitp Book Revea's .Atrocities 54 

Character of the Material L^sed In This Book — <5erman Sources 64 

Treatment of Civilians — Mass-acres 55 

Extracts from German War Diaries 55 

German Order to the People of Liege. Belgium 58 

Slaughter of the Innocents at Rocher Bayerd 59 

Pastor Defends Frightfulness 60 

Germans Take Hostages in Every Street 60 

German Proclamntiori to the Population of Rheims 60 

Hostages at Willekamm 61 

Civilians I'sed as Screens 61 

No Respect to the Ca.s'ock 62 

Vill.ages Made Responsible 62 

-Another Scrap of Paper 62 

Mercler's Moving .Appeal 63 

Workmen Recite Their Wrongs at German Hands 64 

.An .Appeal for Decent Treatment 64 

The Germans Have Xo Right to Talk .About Unemployment of Belgians 64 

All Belgians Understand the Gorman Scheme 65 

The Tears of the Mothers and the Children 65 

Xo Shadow of Excuse for Deportation 66 

The Women of Belgium Have Kept Back Their Tears 66 

The Rights of Honor and Conscience 67 

A Solemn Protest by United States 67 

German War Practices the Same in all Occupied Regions 68 

Inhabitants of Lille Given Xinet v Minutes to Depart 68 

protest of !?ishop Cha'ost of Lille 68 

.Appeal to the Humanity of the Commander 69 

The Methods of Deportation a Danger to Morals 69 

Sometimes a kind-Hearted Offlcer Could Xot Carry Out the Brutal Orders 69 

Numbers Deported ^0 

Young Men and Girls Lodged In Disgraceful Promiscuity 70 

People Rely on the Xeutral Powers 70 

Striking Events of War Ended by Hvins' Surrender 71 

A Chronological Record of the World's W ar 73 

V orld's Peace Treatv Signed In Vers-alUes, France S^ 

Map 



OCI.A52i)21l 

JUL 14/9/9 



■"V-i...'* f 



FOREWORD 

In writing these pages, I have aimed to place the truth and that 
alone; therefore, I am writing the true chronological record of the 
^ Fifth U. S. A. Evacuation Hospital, from its formative period, No- 
vember 18th and 19th, 1917, at the U. S. Government Medical Training 
- Camp, at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., up to the closing scenes of this medical 
<^ unit, and the mustering out of its personnel, at several camps, includ- 
. ing Camp Upton, Long Island, N. Y. ; Camp Dix, New Jersey; Camp 
>^ Devens, Massachusetts; Camp Sherman, Ohio, and several other 
"S^Western camps. 

•'S First of all, those who are interested in the world's greatest war, 

will find food for thought; but — you will not find any fiction. This, I 
endeavored to avoid. I aim to make these lines so they will be inter- 
esting to all. First of all, we are non-combating troops. We did 
not return to America, the greatest nation of the world, with framed- 
up stories. "How we went over the top." 

POSITION AT THE FRONT. 

We were compelled to take a position at the front ("In the War 
Zone") about four miles from the firing line. Those who have only a 
vague idea of distance may say it was far enough back, but for the 
benefit of those who entertain this thought, should have been with 
us at Sery-Magneval, near Crepy, France, Chateau-Thierry and Vil- 
lers-Cotterets, and Soissons (Swi-Sawn) front. At these places, the 
German night air raiders hovered like a vulture (after prey) over us 
and dropped plenty of big bombs everv favorable night ("When it 
wasn't raining"; they could not see well to fly when raining). 

The bombing periods usually lasted from fifteen minutes to half 
an hour. Enemy aeroplanes, bombing machines, appeared all hours 
of the night, and made it very uncomfortable for us. However, we 
grew hardened to the horrible sound of the Hun motor ("like a huge 
bee"). After a short time at the front, the sound of the Hun motor 
meant only a warning to us. 

It was the bombs they dropped that counted. While we were on 
several different fronts in France, from what we learned while operat- 
ing in "No Man's Land" in Belgium, we were the only Evacuation 
Hospital on the Belgium Front in West Flanders. We were in active 
service, located at the "Blown Down Town" of Staden, Belgium, 
when the armistice was granted; firing ceased by the American bat- 
teries at 11 o'clock p. m. French time (five hours' difference in U. S. 
time), 6 o'clock Washington time. 

' I have written this book chiefly for an "After the war livelihood." 
In addition to the chronological record of the Fifth Evacuation Hos- 
pital under canvas, you will also find a chronological record of the 
world's greatest war, which you will find not onlj' interesting, but 
educational. 

You will find things of a personal character within the book, but 
you will find them interesting. I have taken them from my journal or 
diary of events that happened to me and objects that I saw, and of 
characters that I conversed with from time to time. 



Editorial from Camp Crane News. (We were at Camp Crane, 
AUentown, Pa., before going abroad.) 

The men who sail on the American transports to-day embark on 
the greatest, most unselfish and most glorious adventure of all history. 
For thousands of years to come, men will eagerly read and talk of 
the great enterprise in which Americans of today are privileged to 
participate. For thousands of years to come, men worthy of the 
name will envy those who are permited to fight for America's splen- 
did ideals in the epic struggle of all time. 

From the great countries of Europe, which have served as the 
cradle for the civilization to which we belong, brave, valiant and ad- 
venturious spirits, hungry for freedom and liberty, have sailed across 
the ocean to this clean and fresh America, the very name of which has 
slowly come to mean so much to all the world. America has taken 
them, given them happiness, freedom, riches and contentment in 
the fullest possible measure. 

Now their descendents return across the ocean to destroy the 
bestial thing which is the eternal foe of all the ideals America rep- 
resents; return across the ocean to bring to oppressed peoples in the 
old world the liberty and freedom, the freshness of soul and the 
cleanness of mind our great country has given to all who have come 
under her unsullied flag. 

Just as we can close our eyes and see the American colors carried 
by brave, honest and determined men from every corner of the whole 
vast expanse of America; can see it flown by great fleets of warships 
and transports across the sea; can see it borne along the roads of 
France and Flanders to the frontiers of civilization, so men of all 
future time will close their eyes and see the American flag carried 
bravely and triumphantly across the pages of history; will see it come 
as a symbol of great, human aspirations to bring freedom and peace 
to a harrassed world. 

Think how men will be stirred, how they will thrill and be uplifted, 
when they read of America's Crussade. They will conjure it all up 
from the beginning, will see it unfold before them as some marvelous 
and inspiring pageant. They will see America going steadily along 
on her career of peace. They will see the great war begin, and 
America's shocked and horrified amazement. They will see the years 
1915 and 1916 the valient fight offered by the Allies; the incompre- 
hensible horrors and atrocities committed by Germany; the slowly 
developing determination of America. 

They will see a great nation, standing squarely back of the great 
President, who so marvelously voices the thoughts of all the nations, 
slowly strip for action. They will see the cities and towns and vil- 
lages, the crowded streets and the quiet country lanes, from which 
brave men, laying aside the old interests of peace, take up the ways 
of war, determined that Prussianism shall no longer be permitted to 
exist. They will see soldiers arise as if by magic; see them trained 
and sent to the embarkation ports. They will see the transports move 
out, bearing the crusaders who go to risk all, with no hope of gain 
and no selfish motive. They will see hard struggle, the triumphant 
end. They will see the transports bearing back to a new, ennobled, 
exalted America the valiant spirits who participated in the fight. They 



will see the years of happy peace that follow. They will see 
America's young men slowly growing old, even more and more proud 
of their participation in the great struggle, ever more and more hon- 
ored by the rising generation, looking back always to the unbeliev- 
ably splendid days of their fortunate and wonderful youth. 

The very names of the boats that bear us over the ocean, back to 
the lands from which our ancestors came, will be remembered. Every 
name of every transport will figure in the poetry, the literature, the 
art, the history of the future. 

Generation after generation will remember and think of these ex- 
periences we are undergoing today. Let us determine to sec the ad- 
venture as they will see it. Let us understand the great privilege 
which is ours. Let us be infinitely glad and happy that we are living 
in such epic times and have been granted the honor of participating 
in the greatest advanture of history. 



EVACUATION HOSPITAL. 

The Evacuation Hospitals are medical units belonging to the 
line of communication. Ordinarily two Evacuation Hospitals are 
assigned to a line of communications for each division (26,000 men) 
which it serves in the zone of the advancs. Note: While a unit of 
this kind calls for sixteen officers and 179 enlisted men, we found from 
the beginning that the number of enlisted men (179) was far inade- 
quate for efficient service; too much equipment and heavy lifting to be 
done in a hurry. We had approximately 200 tons of effects. The war 
department give us more men who came from casual companies from 
time to time to assist us. We finished with 308 enlisted men. 

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS OF AN EVACUATION HOSPITAL. 

An Evacuation Hospital is preferably established on a railway or 
navigable stream, but this preference, of course, yields to the mili- 
tary situation. Care is taken to choose a site accessible to wheeled 
transport and with an abundant supply of water and fuel. 

The places where Evacuation Hospitals are to be established, or to 
which they are to be moved, is determined by the surgeon, advance 
group, under the authority of his commanding officer. 

Before a battle, all Evacuation Hospitals are brought as far forward 
as possible and remain in readiness for opening or further advance. 
The character of the surgical treatment given to wounded varies widely 
under different conditions. When during battle many wounded are 
being received, the treatment afforded is hardly more extensive than 
that at Field Hospitals (a Field Hospital is between the firing line 
and an Evacuation Hospital). When few wounded are coming in and 
there is no probability of an early move, complete treatment is given 
even during battle. Serious cases requiring protracted treatment are 
sent to the rear as soon as their conditions permit. When battle is 
expected active, measures of evacuation are employed to clear the 
Evacuation Hospitals in use, so they may be ready for movement to- 
ward the front. 

During battle, all patients in Evacuation Hospitals who are fit 
for transportation, are hurried to the rear as soon as possible, to make 
room for new cases from the front. 



In former wars, Evacuation Hospitals were not used, but to givt 
additional and better treatment to the wounded, they were used in thf 
world's greatest war by our own forces, and by our allies. The 
French called them Evacuation Hospitals, the British called then 
clearing stations. 

During battle, there was an enormous field for emergency surgery 
We had nine or ten operating tables working day and night undei 
canvas in the field; we carried our own portable electric plant witl 
us and two X-Ray plants. We had as many as thirty tents — 16x5( 
feet long — erected to take care of the wounded outside of office, mes5 
and quartermaster tents. 

THE FORMATIVE PERIOD OF THE FIFTH EVACUATIO^ 

HOSPITAL. 

The company was formed at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., Camp Green 
leaf, seven miles from Chattanooga, Tenn., November 18th and 19th 
1917. However, at this time we did not have sufficient number of mer 
to fill up our company of 179 enlisted men. But, in December o 
1917, there were a number of men sent from Fort Slocum, N. Y., which 
made us 147 men; we were still short 32 men when we left Fort Ogle 
thorpe, Ga., to come north to Camp Crane, Allentown, Pa. 



BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR OF 1870 
As all eyes are upon France and Germany, a bit of the French 
German war of 1870 is appropriate and fitting. In 1870 war wa: 
declared by France against Germany; and the French armies unde 
Marshals McMahon and Bazine, marched to the Rhine, but the state; 
of the North German confederation, as well as the South Germai 
states, with perfect unanimity, joined all their forces under Kin| 
William of Prussia, to repel the invaders, and immense armies, anc 
splendid in discipline and equipment, were promptly concentrated nea 
the east bank of the Rhine, under the Prussian Monarch, aided b: 
Von Moltke, and other generals. In the first conflicts, McMahon wa 
defeated and driven into retreat; but he took up a strong positioi 
at Sedan. Here was fought a great and decisive battle on the first o 
September, and the French driven from their positions and sur 
rounded. More than 80,000 men laid down their arms, and Napoleoii 
himself became a prisoner. While a part of the German arm; 
marched on Paris, and invested that city, Bazine was shut up in Metz. 
where on the 21st of October he surrendered his army prisoners of 
war. Paris held out until January 28th, 1871, when it yielded, and wa 
occupied by the German forces. Meanwhile, Napoleon being a pris 
oner, the French Republic had been declared, and Thiers was electdi 
president. Soon afterwards an insurrection broke out in Paris, sup 
ported by the commune, which lasted several months, during which 
the insurgents committed many acts of atrocity and violence. It was 
put down in May, 1871. On this, finding it impossible to reconcile tht- 
hostile factions. Thiers resigned in May, 1873, and Marshal Mc- 
Mahon was elected president in his stead. The death of Napoleo : 
occurred in the commencement of that year, January 9th. During 
the same year occurred, also, the trial of Marshal Bazaine (from 
October 6th to December 10th) upon charges based upon his surren- 
der of the army at Metz, It resulted in his conviction, then he wa. 



sentenced to degradation from his rank as general, and death. But 
he was recommended to mercy by his judges, and President Mc- 
Mahon commuted the sentence of death to 20 years' seclusion. The 
principal events since that time were, the universal exhibition at 
Paris in 1878, and the resignation of President McMahon in Janu- 
ary, 1879. 



We are now about to accept the gauge of battle with this natural 
foe to liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the 
nation to check and mollify its pretensions and its power. We are 
glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about 
them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the 
liberation of its people, the German people included; for the rights 
of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to 
choose their way of life and obedience, the world must be made safe 
for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the trusted founda- 
tions of political liberty. But the right is more precious than peace, 
and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest 
our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to 
authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and 
liberties of small nations, for a universal dominon of right by such 
a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all na- 
tions, and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can 
dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and every- 
thing that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day 
has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her 
might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness, and the 
peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no 
other. — Woodrow Wilson. 



TO WILLIAM THE DAMNED. 

(King of Prussia and Kaiser of Germany.) 

Printed by permission and courtesy of the Frank A. Munsey Co., 

New York City. 

By Clyde M. Broadwell. 

Born from the womb of hate; 

Hating the womb that bore; 
Demon, by high estate 

Made demon more. 
Out of the void you came; 
Into the void shall go. 
Creature of deathless shame. 

Murder and woe. 
Cursed as you cursed the earth; 

Hated for hate you brewed. 
Damned was your day of birth, 

King Satan-spewed. 
God can not pity you; 

Christ can not intercede, 
You, who no pity knew, 

Go to your meed. 



March 1st, 1918, the Fifth Evacuation Hospital Leaves Fort Ogle- 
thorpe, Ga., for the North, to Camp Crane, AUentown, Pa. 

The following is taken from my dairy. March 1st, 1918, 6:20 
p. m. The company is all packed, ready to entrain to somewhere 
at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning. A farewell reception will be given' 
the company at "Y" 31 this p. m. 

March 2nd, 1918, 3:35 p. m. At the little town of Lytle, Ga. On 
the Central of Georgia Railroad. We are now waiting for cars to 
convey the company somewhere. We were busy all morning hauling 
our effects, to Lytle where we entrained; we finished loading at 10:30 
a. m. The company was given the privilege to go around this little 
town of Lytle, but to look out for bugle assembly call. We got no 
sleep last night, and we were up at 3 a. m. It is a bright sunny day 
and warm. 

March 3rd, 1918. En route somewhere in Tennessee, going north, 
on the Southern R. R., 8:10 a. m. Privates Swanson, Naylor and 
Blank occupied a stateroom in Pullman car "Puente." 

(Note) If the reader will follow us closely from this point on, 
and have patience, you will see where we start on our perilous jour- 
ney across the ocean. 

Bristol, Tenn., en route, March 3rd, 1918, 11:55 a. m. We stopped 
here, and the company marched through the town for exercise. We 
are entrained again and about to leave, going north, on the Norfolk 
& Western Ry. We arrived at Roanoke, Va., at 6:30 p. m. 

March 4th, 1918, 9:30 a. m. At Wilmington, Del., on the B. & 
O. Ry. 

Arriving at Philadelphia, Pa., March 4th, 1918. We arrived at 
Philadelphia, Pa., on the B. & O. Ry., at 10:35 a. m. The Red Cross 
met our train and treated the boys. We left at 12:45 p. m. 

Arrival at AUentown, Pa., Camp Crane, March 4th, 1918. We came 
from Philadelphia, Pa., over the Philadelphia & Reading Ry., to 
AUentown, Pa., arriving at 4 o'clock p. m. The company marched 
to the camp, which is in the Fair Grounds. We arrived there at 5 
o'clock p. m. The company took mess here in the huge mess hall, 
after which the company filled their bed ticks with straw and ar- 
ranged things for the night. 

We had a very delightful trip from the South. We were routed 
over the Central of Georgia Ry., Southern Ry., Norfolk & Western 
Ry., Baltimore & Ohio Ry., and Philadelphia & Reading, to Allen- 
town, Pa. 

HOSPITAL TRAINING WHILE AT CAMP CRANE, 
ALLENTOWN, PA. 

While here the Government sent many of our company, "Evacua- 
tion Hospital No. 5," to the different hospitals here and environments 
for practical training. I and sixteen others were sent for a month to 
St. Luke's Hospital at South Bethlehem, Pa.; others were sent to the 
hospital at the Bethlehem Steel Plant; others to the AUentown hos- 
pitals; some went to Bellevue Hospital, New York City, and some to 
Hazelton, Pa., Hospital. While at St. Luke's Hospital I assisted in 
examining hundreds of recruits for the army. 



April 27th, 1918, Saturday. The entire company at Valley Forge, 
Pa., and at Philadelphia, Pa. 

The entire company arrived at Valley Forge, Pa., at 11 o'clock 
a. m., the 28th. The entire company participated in the huge war 
parade in Philadelphia yesterday. Our company took a position in 
the parade well up front. We started at 1:30 and finished at 4 o'clock 
p. m. The day was beautiful. We had eleven army auto trucks to 
convey us to Philadelphia; seventeen men in each truck; the officers 
came in touring cars; we left Allentown, Pa., Camp Crane, at 6 
o'clock a. m. Saturday. We followed the Philadelphia pike or State 
Highway, leading into the old York Road into North Philadelphia. 
The company was unloaded out of the trucks at the Philadelphia 
base ball park, where we waited to take our place in the parade. The 
whole company was quartered the same night in the Second Infantry 
Armory on North Broad Street; we slept on the floor. On the morn- 
ing on the 28th, Sunday, at 6 o'clock, we were loaded in the same auto 
trucks, and went in the direction of West Philadelphia, where we 
struck the old Lancaster Stage Coach road, which we followed 
through Ardmore, Pa., and Bryn Mawr, Pa., as far as Greentree; here 
we stopped; we went about two miles beyond the road that led to 
Valley Forge; we had to turn and come back; Valley Forge is now 
six miles away. We arrived at Valley Forge at 10 o'clock Sunday 
morning. We followed the Highway to a small town on the Phila- 
delphia & Reading Ry. called Port Kennedy, two miles from Val- 
ley Forge, here we crosed the bridge by Betzwood, on the Schuyl- 
kill Valley of the Pennsylvania Ry., where the company pitched their 
small shelter tents (holds two men lying down) to sleep on the 
ground for the night. We carried our army mess kitchen on wheels 
with us. At 2 o'clock p. m. Sunday our army trucks conveyed us to 
see the sights, at the historic grounds, where Washington camped 
during the Revolutionary war days at Valley Forge. We had a de- 
lightful day; we left for camp at 5 o'clock p. m. In the evening until 
11 o'clock p. m. we had a huge campfire burning, and about 100 men 
about telling funny stories and singing. We left promptly at 8 
o'clock a. m., Monday, April 29th, 1918, for our quarters at Camp 
Crane, Allentown, Pa. We arived at 11:50 a. m., in time for mess. 
We had no trouble with our auto cars, but we carried two repair 
cars with mechanics. We had a delightful and splendid trip. It is 56 
miles one way from Allentown, Pa., to Philadelphia, Pa. 

THE BEGINNING OF OUR OVERSEA JOURNEY. 

Allentown, Pa., Camp Crane, May 8th, 1918. At 9 o'clock a. m. 
today we emptied out our bed ticks, and packed everything in our bar- 
rack bags; we expect to move tonight. So it is soon farewell Amer- 
ica. The following is taken from my diary: 

Leaving Camp (,rane, Allentown, Pa., for oversea, May 8th, 1918. 

One-fifty a. m., the company is now on the train at the Lehigh 
Valley Ry. Station, Allentown, Pa., on our way to Jersey City, N. J. 
We left at 1:58 a. m. We arrived at Jersey City at 7:40 a. m.; the 
company was inspected by Government inspectors while on the train. 
At 1:45 p. m. we were on board an Italian ship, at Hoboken, N. J. 

May 9th, 1918. The ship is manned by an Italian crew, and carries 
the Italian flag; we are somewhere near Twenty-third Street, New 



York. The name of our ship is Caserta, and belongs at Genoa, 
Italy. 

May 10th, Hoboken, N. J., 1918. From my diary, 8:12 a. m. The 
mess is very poor but we are doing no kicking. My berth is plain 
boards; a straw tick, however, is fair these times. More infantry 
and medical men are coming aboard now. We were all given life 
preservers today with instructions as to how to use them. Every man 
on board had to have a life preserver. 

May 11th, 10 o'clock a. m., at sea, a delightful day. I was one of 
the first to get sick; some sick crowd. We are now seventeen hours 
from American shores. 

May 12th, 1918, Sunday, 8 o'clock a. m., on the high seas; all is 
well; foggy this morning. We had lifebelt drill this morning. Three 
o'clock p. m., all is well. 

May 13th, 1918, Monday, 10 a. m., calm sea; all is well. We were 
given tobacco this morning. On the box was printed these words: 
To the enlisted men "for use on the voyage." The contents of this 
box is sent to you with, appreciation of your patriotism, heartiest 
wishes, for a good aim, good luck and a safe voyage. From an Army 
Girl's Transport Fund, 25 Pine Street, New York City. 

May 14th, 1918, Tuesday, at sea; all is well. Lifeboat drill today. 

May 15th, 1918. Somewhere at sea. 

May 16th, 1918, 11:50 a. m., boat time; somewhere at sea; all 
is well. 

May 17th, 1918. A rough sea all last night and today. The com- 
pany typewriter was thrown out of the door, and two men on top of 
it; the five tables we had in our section are laying flat on the floor; 
we were thrown from one side of our bunks to the other; 4 p. m. The 
deck we had been walking on is dipping into the sea. 

May 18th, 1918. The sea is still mad last night and today; many 
are seasick. 

May 19th, 1918, Sunday, 8 o'clock a. m. Sea is rough; we have 
been in the submarine zone since 7:20 p. m. yesterday. 

May 21, 1918, Tuesday, 8:45 a. m. A delightful morning; some- 
where at sea; all is well. 

May 22nd, 1918, 6 o'clock a. m. While I was on deck at 3:30 a. m. 
(now we were in the dangerous submarine zone, and we were told we 
could stay on deck during the night if we wanted to. I was there one 
night). We had a little excitement; we sighted what we thought was 
a submarine periscope; no submarine; land not yet. All is well. 

May 23rd, 1918, 8 o'clock a. m. A sunny day, land not yet, the 
voyage is monotonous. 

May 23rd, 1918, 10:50 a. m., at port, in the Harbor of Brest, France, 
Thursday. We were 13 days crossing the ocean, zigzagging all the 
time, changing courses to keep out of the way of submarines. We 
were all mighty glad we got across safe. 

At the Port of Brest, France, May 24, 1918, Friday, 6 o'clock a. m. 

We are now at Brest, France; the sun was shining when we entered 
the channel that led up to the Harbor of Brest. We were all glad 
to see land again; we experienced no trouble on our voyage. 

10 



May 25th, 1918. Now in France, on land. The peculiar railroad 
trains and customs are some of the things that caught our eye. The 
language of the natives amused us very much. We had a very dis- 
couraging reception 20 minutes after landing; we marched to the rail- 
road station and stopped temporarily; here we saw a Red Cross Am- 
bulance train come in, loaded with all kinds of wounded Frenchmen; 
but it didn't get our nerve at all, for we just took it as a matter of 
course, knew it was war and passed it by. It was a very hot day. 
From here at Brest we start on a six-mile march with a 6S-pound pack 
on our back up a mile long hill, through Brest and on to the old 
stonewall barracks of Napoleon (at Pontenazen), where the company 
was quartered in tents. During our stay here at Pontenazen the 
weather was good; it was dry weather at that time, but we only 
remained at Pontenazen at Brest seven days. (Note) Since our re- 
turn, there has been much newspaper talk about the bad conditions 
at Brest. We arrived at Brest and left from Camp Keryon, near 
Brest; but for our company we cannot say we experienced any bady 
conditions. I cannot say what the others endured. 

Our perilous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of 3,000 
miles. 

The Fifth Evacuation Hospital, U. S. Regular Army Unit, em- 
barked on the ninth and left on the tenth of May, 1918, about 5:30 p. 
m. We were on board the Italian steamship Caserta, and one of the 
filthiest boats I have ever been on; it was an old boat, and one of the 
smaller class, it was manned by an Italian crew, and carried the Italian 
flag. We were packed like sardines in the boat, but we didn't mind 
that, we knew our Government wanted to get the Army across. The 
Casterta was an Italian cattle boat and fitted up with ordinary plain 
board berths (not painted) and had a small straw tick on which to lay. 
We left the pier of the Hoboken, N. J., side at 5:30 p. m., May 10th, to 
go down the Hudson River. Orders had been issued that every man 
stay below out of sight. This was done to keep German spies from 
knowing when any troops left the country. After we got out of New 
York Bay we met other boats that were loaded with troops also. Our 
journey on sea had now commenced. We had fourteen large ships 
with us; we were bunched together all the time, while crossing day 
and night. All lights on all the boats were out, we steamed along 
without lights every night. No one on board was permitted to strike 
a match for fear a German submarine would sight us and torpedo us. 
We were thirteen days crossing the ocean, but we changed our course 
all the time; of course, our boats received orders by wireless what 
to do. We were convoyed by one United States cruiser until about 
two days away from Brest, France, when it left us, turned and went 
back. We heard in France it was attacked by five German submarines 
and sunk; but not until it had disposed of three German submarines. 
We had with us the President Lincoln, one of the largest boats afloat, 
formerly a German passenger boat taken over by our Government. 
As soon as we unloaded at Brest, where we all landed, the Lincoln 
started back to America and was sunk by a German submarine. When 
about two days out of Brest, France, we were met by twelve small 
submarine destroyers; they were camouflaged to look like the waves. 
While on deck we were amused to see them like a bird go any direc- 
tion after what they thought might be a "sub" periscope sticking out 

11 



of the water; they took no chances. The boats were built of steel and 
very fast, they went like spiders over the ocean; they were so small 
they got behind the big waves and we couldn't see them. The most 
of ours were British destroyers convoying us. They convoyed us to 
the very entrance of the channel that leads up to the Bay of Brest; 
waved to us (it was 10 o'clock a. m. on a bright day), turned and left 
us, going back to convoy more. We had 42,000 men on board our 
ships; we steamed up the narrow entrance to the bay one at a time, 
in a line following one another, a grand sight. We had that part of 
Brest full of ships. American officers come up on small ladders and 
asked the name of our boat; this was while we were anchored in the 
harbor. The voyage got to be very monotonous, seeing nothing but 
water. We had life-belt drill daily going across. When we started 
we didn't know where we were going to land if we did get over safe. 
All our ships had guns, fore and aft, and men stationed at them all the 
time ready to shoot. We were compelled to wear our life belts night 
and day in the danger zone, and our life boats were also ready. While 
we weren't worried, it was an unsafe place to be if any of our boats 
were torpedoed. Fortunately we landed on French soil for the first 
time on the 24th of May, 1918. 

At Pontenazen Barracks, France, from May 24th to 30th, inclusive. 

We were quartered here in the old Napoleon Barracks, of stone; 
about ten buildings, two stories high; the buildings are twenty in 
number, about 50 by 200 feet long. The grounds are large and flat, 
surrounded by a great stone wall, about fourteen feet high; it has 
three gateways. There were a number of smaller very old stone 
buildings within the walls, which were historical indeed; we were 
quartered in tents outside these buildings. 

Leaving Pontenazen on the morning of May 31, 1918, by rail to- 
wards the front. The following is taken from my diary: . 

June 1st, en route on French railroad, some railroad cars (Oh, 
Boy!), an army term. We were in these small match boxes on wheels, 
as we called them, 31 in our car with their equipment, with a few boxes 
of hardtack and a few boxes of (Cornwillie) corn beef. Oh, Boy! Just 
imagine thirty-one in a car sixteen feet long. At night we were 
walking on each other's heads, back, chest and legs, because it was 
dark and we weren't permitted to strike a match, for a German night 
bomber (aeroplane) might blow us to pieces. Well, we didn't have 
any room to lie down and rest, so we couldn't rest when we had a 
chance. On account of the scarcity of cars they were compelled to 
pack us in the cars in the manner I have described, but. Oh, Boy! 
tough lines. 

June 2nd, en route. 

June 3rd, en route, arrived at Dijon, France. Treated by Red Cross 
to coffee, sandwiches and chocolate. 

June 4th, en route, arrived at Prauthoy, France, at 4 o'clock p. m. 

a distance of 800 kilometers (500 miles) from Brest, towards the 
front to Prauthoy. Here we detrained and unloaded our effects, a 
little French village about 2000 inhabitants. Here on the outskirts of 

12 



this little town, we were quartered in barracks called Camp Hospital 
No. 10. We were the only troops quartered here during our stay. 
The company did nothing here but do gas-mask drilling, and wait on 
orders from the War Department. During our stay we hiked to the 
different villages in our environments. 

June 26th, 1918, still at Prauthoy, France. Cherries are ripe here 
and the boys are getting their share. It is estimated that there are 
1500 cherry trees in a radius of a mile. 

June 29th, 1918, at Prauthoy, France. A few of us were given the 
privilege to visit the famous old city of Longres, 17 miles from here. 
We visited several stores here; we also visited the mammoth Cathe- 
dral, which is fine, all stone interior and exterior. We entered tlie 
city at one place, where there are three large stone gateways, where 
there are three moats, to fill with water for the defense of the city, 
built many years ago. We left the city via the Narrow Gauge Ry. 
which conveys passengers to the East French Ry. a mile down the 
valley; where we boarded a passenger train (one in gets inside of 
French coaches or wagons as they call them, not in the end like 
America) for Prauthoy our camp. Soldiers rode free on trains in 
France. (Note: We had no wounded nor sick to take care of while 
at Prauthoy.) 

July 3rd, 1918, at 10:29 a. m. We visited the French town of Dom- 
marien today. Here a large stone cross was standing, bearing the 
date 1714 — 204 years old. 

July 16th, 1918. The Germans started a drive yesterday on a 50- 
mile front, the Germans crossed the Marne River but were driven 
back. 

The Company Moves to the Front. 

Prauthoy, France, July 17th, 1918. We are loading all our effects 
in cars for movement to the front. 

July 18th, 1918, Prauthoy, France. We left here at 6 o'clock a. m. 
on the East Ry. for the front. Twelve-thirty p. m. stopped at the 
station sheds in the city of Troy. We left at 5:06 p. m. 

July 19th, 1918, At Jouy, France. Held here on siding for govern- 
ment orders. We are now fifteen miles from the front. Twelve-five 
p. m., American and French aeroplanes by the hundreds flying over 
us, going over the lines. Here at this town the Germans bombarded a 
hospital, killing several. Two o'clock p. m., still at Jouy, on the East 
Ry. Our orders from headquarters have been changed. Six-fifteen 
p. m., we are now leaving Jouy on the East Ry. 

July 20th, 1918, 3:45 a. m. We are now five miles from Paris, in 
railroad yards. Seven o'clock a. m., we are leaving on the North Ry. 
to the front. We are not going through Paris. 

At the Front. 

July 20th, 1918, at Crepy, France. We arrived here at 10 o'clock 
a. m. and immediately backed on a siding, here 3,000 German pris- 
oners marched by. At 10:45, I and ten others were detailed 
to assist the wounded brought in from the front line, the scene 
was horrible. We gave them food and water and other assistance. 

13 



One I fed was shot through the head; and was totally blind, blood was 
running out of his eyes. One German died. They were all laid on 
the ground in the hot sun until we moved them to other quarters; we 
took care of Americans only. The French theirs. There were about 
400 wounded in every way. The one American shot in the head said 
he was from Chicago, 111. I did not ask him his name, other things to 
be done quick. At 3:30 p. m. a Red Cross train arrived from Paris, to 
convey the wounded further back of the lines. The wounded told me 
how they made the great dash over their dead comrades and gained 
what they thought was four miles. We assisted in taking care of 
French wounded also, later. In the railroad yards here I asked a 
Frenchman for a drink of water, where they were watering about 
1,000 German prisoners. "Nothing doing, the Frenchman said, Ameri- 
can, give him wine," and they gave me wine. 

The big town of Crapy is blown to pieces. 

Bombarded by the Germans, all the buildings are blown to bits, 
the big factories, all the town, railroad station, all railroad buildings, 
where our trains stopped, are blown to pieces; scene is awful. The few 
civilians left are moving away by train today. 

July 21st, 1918. Where our hospital is erected under canvas, at 
Sery-Magneval. France, three miles from Crepy. 

Our effects were hurried to the spot, where we quickly threw up our 
tents. Before we had a chance to erect our first receiving ward tent, 
the wounded commenced to roll in to us. We are now filled up at 
7 o'clock p. m. We are now throwing up more tents as fast as pos- 
sible, assisted by the French. The great American drive is on. From 
reports we get from those coming direct from the line, the Allies are 
driving the Hun home. We are all working day and night; we cer- 
tainly know now the horrors of war. There is an endless chain of 
American wounded coming into our hospital. We are played out; 
the rush of wounded initiated us well. We have one small German 
soldier who was wounded. He says he is 19. he looks to be only 15 
years old; he has bad wounds in both legs. We had so many wounded 
last night we could not accept any but Americans. A British am- 
bulance driver begged our colonel, as I stood by them in the dark and 
thunder and lightening, and raining hard, to take his wounded. With 
regrets our colonel refused, saying we could not handle them. We 
could not take all our own wounded. We knew of about 400 more 
American wounded coming. The Britisher saluted in the dark, got on 
his auto and drove away. Two of our wounded died today. Our 
officers are working, in the operating room, under canvas, day and 
night continuously, eight operating tables going all the time. Great 
stories the wounded tell of the great drive. 

July 22nd, 1918, 12:25 p. m. Another German aeroplane bombing 
raid last night. No one hurt; they missed us. Wounded Americans 
still coming in in strings. We evacuated 200 wounded to Paris today. 
others to follow. We had twelve die last night. We got thirty phy- 
sicians in Paris to assist us, at 10 o'clock today. It was about 10:20 
a. m. when a German aeroplane flew directlv over us, evidently tak- 
ing pictures. The French 75s guns on the hill near us fired ten shots 

14 



which came near the Hun, but they missed him. Thousands of Ger- 
man prisoners are passing by us on the rural roads on foot today to 
the rear. Physicians are operating every minute, day and night. The 
wounded must be taken care of. Seven o'clock p. m., we are evacuat- 
ing wounded as fast as operations on them can be made, further to the 
rear of the line. Total dead at this time at our hospital is twenty- 
seven. One of our wounded Americans told me that one of the Ger- 
man machine gunners played havoc, until a charge got him alive; he 
was a boy 16 years old. We are looking for another German air 
raid tonight. These are awful quiet times around here (Oh, Boy!) 
Field Hospital No. 13 is just across the road from us, doing fine work. 
Here I saw this morning a wounded Scotchman leading a wounded 
American. Hundreds of aeroplanes Hy over us daily. The number of 
operating tables we have now under canvas is ten, going day and 
night. No lights of any kind are allowed at night. Last night at 12 
o'clock, during the German air bombing raid, all lights in the operat- 
ing tents were extinguished. German bombs dropped from aero- 
planes at night, drill a hole in the ground when they explode, that 
one could bury two horses in. Some noise when they hit. Oh, Boy! 
If they strike anywhere near anyone they will blow them to atoms. 

July 23rd, 1918, Sery-Magneval, France. 

No raids last night. Only a small number of wounded came in 
last night. We evacuated the majority of patients back to Paris last 
night. Ten more physicians arrived to assist us last night. Twenty 
more enlisted men the War Department sent to assist us tempo- 
rarily. British troops are replacing the Americans at Soissons Sec- 
tor. The majority of wounded brought in our hospital today from 
the lines were British; they are again coming in to us as fast as ever; 
work all the time, night and day; no sleep in sight. I have been 
assisting at the receiving tent by day and by night. Quite 
interesting stories are told us by the wounded, how they 
made the Hun run, fall over one another, get up and run 
again. Not one of us can write letters; no paper about camp, 
and we haven't got time to write. I jot my notes in a hurry. Large 
columns of German prisoners pass our hospital. One interesting 
thing occurred this morning when 1000 or more were walking by us. 
The French guards made a German carry the French flag at the head 
of the column. The banging away around here sounds like a dozen 
Fourth of Julys put together back home. Oh, Boy, some life! If I 
only had an hour's sleep; explosions of all kinds of weapons keep us 
awake all the time. Many of the wounded brought in to us are hor- 
rible; the cries of the wounded are terrible also; but we are used to it 
now. We are doing our best to help them. 9:10 p. m., I just returned 
from the spot where about seventy-five German prisoners are digging 
graves for our dead; it is only 200 feet from my tent. Each buried 
soldier has a wooden cross over his grave, with one of his metal iden- 
tification tags nailed on it. 

July 25th, 1918, Sery-Magneval, France, Near Crepy. 

The German spy who was captured after he had dropped from a 
German aeroplane, with a parachute, in the American lines, lies dead in 

15 



our field morgue this morning. He wore an American uniform; he was 
shot in the head. Quite a number of our company are lousy. A louse is 
common around the war zone. Four p. m., the remains of the First 
and Second Division American troops are coming back for rest after 
fighting so heroically, in successful battles against the Germans, on 
the Soissons front. They had many big cannons they captured. 
Printed on them was: "Captured by the First Division, July 18th and 
19th, 1918." They marched by our hospital on Rural Highway, which 
leads from the front line. The guns were made by the Krupp Gun 
Works in 1915. Only a few wounded arrived today. Four-twenty 
p. m., today we pitched enough tents to accommodate 1,000 wounded; 
out tents are 16x50 feet. 

July 30th, 1918. The company is packing up all eflFects to leave 
Sery-Magneval, evidently closer to the front. We evacuated all pa- 
tients further to the rear last night. One thousand four hundred and 
sixty-five wounded passed through our hospital in three days; we 
lost fifty-nine men dead so far. 

July 31, 1918, 5:10 p. m. The company's effects are all packed 
for a quick getaway; awaiting orders. 

August 1st, 1918. Last night we had one of our worst experi- 
ences; a German air raider visited us and dropped big bombs all 
around us; he dropped one that was four feet by seven inches in 
diameter; steel in the mud; about fifteen feet from me and the com- 
pany; fortunately it struck in the mud and did not explode, or I don't 
think that many of us would have lived to tell the tale, but, Oh, Boy! 
the others he dropped as he went along, drilled a hole in the ground 
about seven feet deep and about ten feet wide. The raid was at 11 
o'clock last night. We had closed our hospital work here and were 
ready to move today; and we were doing nothing. When he com- 
menced to drop his bombs we heard them explode. We could hear 
his motor, but couldn't see him. Well! We got out of our tents and 
scattered in every direction for shelter, and there wasn't any close; 
I run and stood behind a tree. If one had exploded on the side I was 
on I would have been blown to pieces. It was dark, and we didn't 
know where to go to; by this time he had passed over us. Well! 
Talk about some nervous bunch, we were. The French soldiers near 
us were frightened as well; they told us he would return, and he did 
return, dropping them as he came. Many of us, and French soldiers 
together, took shelter away from shrapnel in an old wine cellar. He 
did not come again during the night. Well! There was no sleep on 
the ground that night, we stayed up and talked the matter over. We 
didn't know if they would come back or not. So much for our expe- 
rience last night. While here we took care of 2,626 wounded men. 
The American divisions engaged on this sector were the First and 
Second Divisions. We left 65 dead here. 

Laferte-Milo, France, August 2nd, 1918. 

We arrived yesterday, pitched our hospital tent, in an open space in 
this blown-to-pieces town. This town was a complete ruin. We were 
transported here by auto army trucks, the whole company overland. 
While coming here a German airplane followed us all the way to La- 
ferte-Mila. The anti-aircraft guns were firing at him all along the way, 

16 



but he stayed up high and they could not reach him. We were here at 
Laferta-Milo one day, when we received orders to proceed to Chateau- 
Thierry. We traveled about 35 miles from Sery-Magneval to Laferte- 
Milo; during our stay here of just one night, many of us slept in a 
large natural rock-cave, hundreds of years old. We did this for safety 
to get away from German night bombing raids. There were none, 
however, during the night. We all expect to start for Chateau- 
Thierry by tonight. Everywhere, everything is blown to pieces; awful 
scenes to witness. As we move from sector to sector, town to town, 
we gazed upon it all and wondered how it all come about. I saw 
trenches and barbed wired entanglements everywhere, and great shell 
holes in the highways everywhere. Graves of half-covered dead 
along the way. 

At Chateau-Thierry, August 3rd, 1918, 11 O'clock A. M. 

The company arrived here from Laferto-Milo last night; the 26th 
and 27th Field Hospital are here, but leaving soon, since the lines 
have advanced from here at our very doors. We came here from 
Laferto-Milo in auto trucks. All the way to Chateau-Thierry the 
country was the same; blown to bits; helmets lay around in the fields 
and along the roads. Ammunition of all kinds scattered around, trees 
blown off by shell fire, buildings burned, anything that had anything 
to do with ruin. 

August 4th, 1918, at Chateau-Thierry. 

The first wounded Americans commenced to come in at 12 o'clock 
noon. Our hospital tents are thrown up on the very site where the 
recent drive began. The Marne River runs by very close to us. Ger- 
mans could be seen half buried just across the Marne River. Chateau- 
Thierry is wrecked. All the things that the people left in their homes 
in a quick getaway are ruined. The American wounded coming in 
say that ten Germans were killed to one American. The Allies are 
certainly driving the Hun home. I saw what was once a fine stone 
mansion here burned to the ground and blown to bits. War, war, 
war everywhere. 

August 5th, Chateau-Thierry, France. 

Today the wounded are rolling in by the hundreds. This morning 
I had a little relief; I walked around Chateau-Thierry; it is in ruins. 
The big railroad station is in fairly good condition; the big railroad 
yards are also; the rail communication is now established. We are 
dong our level best to assist the boys again. Again we are working 
night and day without sleep. The wounded told me that the Germans 
have women machine-gunners, chained to their guns. Here, in 
Chateau-Thierry, the mammouth cathedral, centuries old, is wrecked. 
The old stone bridge crossing the Marne River, was blown up. Pon- 
toon bridges now span the river here. 

August 7th, Chateau-Thierry, France. 

A big wounded German prisoner was received for treatment this 
afternoon (wounded in the hand). He was questioned by us. We 
asked him when the German people expected the war to end. He 

17 



replied that they had hopes by fall, and if Austria continued failing 
the way they had been, Germany would be forced to make peace in 
order to hold her own. 

By General Pershing. 

"Hardships will be your lot, but trust in God will give you com- 
fort. Temptations will befall you, but the teachings of our Savior 
will give you strength. Let your valor as a soldier and your conduct 
as a man be an inspiration to your comrades, and an honor to your 
country." 

August 11th, 1918, Chateau-Thierry, France. 

An American aviator was received at our hospital at 1:45 p. m. ; 
he breathed his last just as he was brought in. He was wounded at 
12 o'clock today. He was taking pictures over the German lines at 
the time; about forty German planes attacked him; he was brought 
back to his quarters in the field by his pilot. Great fields of grain 
raised by the Germans is now being reaped by the French in this sec- 
tion. So we fooled the Germans. 

August 16th, 1918, Chateau-Thierry, France. 

Today we received from the American Red Cross, packages from 
the Detroit Free Press Tobacco Fund. 

August 18th, 1918, Chateau-Thierry, France. 

We had a German night air raid last night; some excitement; we 
took shelter in the cellars of wrecked buildings until it was over. He 
missed us; no damage; but kept us from getting any rest, which occurs 
every night. 

August 22nd, 1918, Chateau-Thierry, France. 

Hun aeroplane visited us last night. He passed over us, but did 
not drop any bombs here, but dropped eight a short distance from us. 
The explosion shook the earth. It was at 10 o'clock. Anti-air- 
craft guns fired several shots at him. 

August 23rd, 1918, Chateau-Thierry, France. 

A German machine flew over us at 10 o'clock this morning. He 
did not drop any bombs; the anti-aircraft guns fired at him. Nat- 
urally we were frightened, for they usually drop bombs when they 
come. 

August 24th, 1918, Chateau-Thierry, France. 

We ceased taking patients today. We are preparing to move. 
A German spy was caught near here turning the hands of a steeple 
church clock. He was caught and made to stand against the wall 
and shot. We handled, while here, 3,358 wounded and gassed patients. 
The American divisions engaged here were the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 26th, 
28th, 32nd, 42nd and 77th Divisions. We left 28 dead here. 

18 



August 25th, 1918, Chateau-Thierry, France. 

A German aeroplane paid us a visit last night at 3 o'clock a. m. 
He did not drop any bombs. 

August 2i6th, 1918, Chateau-Thierry, France. 

A German plane visited us again at 2 o'clock this morning. He 
dropped a few bombs close; they certainly keep us awake all right. 

August 27th, 1918, Chateau-Thierry, France. 

We are leaving here today. Seventy auto trucks are conveying 
us overland to Villers-Cotterets. When we left Chateau-Thierry we 
came directly through Belleau Woods, where most of the terrible 
fighting took place. German ammunition is everywhere; hand gren- 
ades of all kinds, machine guns lay around, left behind by the Ger- 
mans. Dugouts in the side of any little hill are numerous. The 
sights are frightful, but interesting. 

August 28th, 1918, Villers-Cotterets, France. 

The company is pitching its tents as quickly as possible. 

August 29th, 1918, Villers-Cotterets, France. 

Another Allied ofTensive started this morning. Our wounded com- 
menced to come in at 11 o'clock a. m. The cannonading at the line has 
been terrific the last two nights. No rest here. The roaring is awful. 
The skies are lit up for miles around; it goes on day and night. 

August 30th, 1918, Villers-Cotterets, France. 

Eleven forty-five a. m., terrific cannonading by the Allies is going 
on at this writing. The Huns are being pushed back. German doctors 
captured yesterday are now working in the field hospital. The 
wounded have been coming in by the hundreds. 

August 21st, 1918, Villers-Cotterets, France. 

I walked into Villers-Cotterets today; here I saw 200 captured 
German cannon along the street — a sight to see. 

September 2nd, 1918, Villers-Cotterets, France. 

We took care of the 32nd Division, American troops assisting the 
French, on the front, northeast of Soissons. The only division on this 
sector. We had 2,170 wounded and gassed while here. We left 
fourteen dead. A French artillery train passed here; about 3000 men 
at 8 o'clock a. m. We are evacuating many wounded to the rear. We 
expect to move to some other front in a few days. A German aero- 
plane visited us last night. He dropped a few bombs in the forest 
near us. It was 11 o'clock p. m. 

September 7th, 1918, Villers-Cotterets, France. 

A German bombing machine is certainly making life miserable for 
us everywhere we go. Four bombing planes gave us all a scare at 

19 



9 o'clock last night. They dropped several bombs but did not hit 
us. The anti-aircraft guns were busy. The Germans went away but 
returned in twenty minutes. 

September 10th, 1918. Villers-Cotterets. France. 

It is 11 o'clock a. m., and raining hard, and has been since 7 last 
night. The mess tent was blown down and many of our small shelter 
tents. Everyone of us wet. The mess was cooked in the downpour 
of rain. It consisted of bacon, oatmeal, coffee and plain raw bread. 
Butter was a curiosity here. We started to break camp yesterday; 18 
of our largest tents are down. 

September 13th, 1918, Villers-Cotterets, France, 

We loaded our effects today, and were leaving for quite a journey 
via railroad. Usually we travel via rail if it is far. This time we 
do not know our destination. 

Souilly, France, September 15th, 1918, 

Seven o'clock p. m. The company arrived here this evening. The 
terminiis of the new French Military Railroad — it is 39 miles long and 
built in 1915, in three months' time. 

Ville-Sur-Conscance, France, September 15th, 1918, 

The company and its effects were conveyed to this little village by 
auto trucks. It is about three miles from Souilly, where we unloaded 
last night in the dark. We did not have any lights, but we took a 
chance and used a couple of candles inside the cars. The Germans 
were busy here. I saw them bring down an observation balloon, 
in flames, just before it became dark, so we had to be careful with all 
lights, and work in the dark. We are close to the lines — about 
seven miles from the famous French city of Verdun, which is France's 
greatest frontier fortress today. It was at Verdun, in the early period 
of the war, that the German Crown Prince hurled his troops in massed 
formation against the French only to be hurled back to defeat. The 
French and Germans lost thousands upon thousands of men here at 
Verdun. We traveled here in box cars (match boxes on wheels), we 
got no sleep — it was miserable I can assure you. We are not in 
service here — only held in reserve. German aeroplanes are numerous 
today. Many flying over us. It is 9 o'clock a. m. Ville-Sur-Con- 
scance is located, in a beautiful little valley near an old mill-stream. 
There is an old stone mill with its huge old-fashioned water wheel 
about 500 feet from camp. On the little hillside close to us lies 3,000 
French dead — buried during the early days of the war. They were 
wounded at the Battle of Verdun. Brought here to the former French 
hospital and died. 

Ville-Sur-Conscance, September 20th. 1918, 
Camped here awaiting orders from the War Department. 

Ville-Sur-Conscance, September 26th, 1918, 

Another big Allied offensive is on. The terrific barrage started at 
12 oclock last night and is going on now at 9 o'clock a. m. At 7 

20 



o'clock this morning an Allied aeroplane flew over our camp, dropped 
a message in the regular tube — message as follows: "No aeroplanes 
or enemy troops can be seen, must be, but we cannot see them." This 
message was intended for the aeroplane quarters near here. The bar- 
rage firing sounds like one continuous round of thunder. At 2:15 p. m 
we were on the hillside near camp; there were eleven observation bal- 
lons up along the battle-front. A German aeroplane brought down 
two, in flames. He returned and brought down two more, also in 
flames. The German escaped back over the lines. Reports coming 
from the lines say that the Germans are retreating fast. 

September 27th, 1918, Ville-Sur-Conscance, France. 

I saw 1,100 German prisoners brought in to the barbed-wire stock- 
ade here at 7 o'clock last night. They were bagged during an Ameri- 
can advance yesterday. Now these prisoners seemed to be happy that 
they had been captured. Today, at 1:15 p. m., our men drove in 1,500 
more in the same stockade. It is great to see them driven in by our 
boys. 

September 29th, 1918, Ville-Sur-Conscance, France. 

I just returned from the German prisoner stockade where I saw 400 
more brought in. They said that they had been on the Russian front, 
and were prisoners in Russia. They were released when Russia quit, 
and put on the Western front, only to be taken prisoners again by the 
Americans. It rained hard all night. It is a dark, cloudy, miserable 
day. The fighting continues at the line where we hear the big guns 
roaring all of the time. Oh, Boy! some noise. 

October 1st, 1918, Ville-Sur-Conscance, France. 

The company has orders for a quick getaway today — leaving via 
railroad. Some fast work to load our effects. Oh, Boy! our big canvas 
tents are all wet and heavy. 

October 2nd, 1918, Couperly, France. 

We arrived here via rail at 6 o'clock this morning. We have been 
waiting here for orders — it is now 11:30 a. m. and are still waiting. 
Wie can hear the big guns roaring at the front just a couple of miles 
away. 

October 2nd, 1918, at La-Veuve, France. 

We arrived via rail at 1 o'clock p. m. We are backed in on a siding 
here, but no orders to unload. A terrific barrage can be heard going 
on at the front. We started to unload all of our effects at 2 o'clock 
p. m. 

October 3rd, 1918, at La- Veuve, France. 

We now have all of our tents erected at 3 p. m. and are ready for 
active service. We are now on the Rheims-Champagne front. We 
witnessed a great sight this morning at 8 o'clock, when 125 Allied 
aeroplanes flew over us going to the front, in the direction of Rheims, 
about 20 miles distant from us. 

21 



October 4th, 1918, La-Veuve, France. 

Eleven forty-five a. m. Seventy-five Allied aeroplanes flew over us. 
going to the front. Since yesterday at 2 o'clock the w^ounded 
American boys have been pouring in to us. They are bringing the 
wounded to us in captured German ambulances, as well as French 
and our own. Some battle. We are driving the Germans back 
every hour. 

October 5th, 1918, La-Veuve, France, 

The number of wounded brought in up to 4 o'clock this morn- 
ing was approximately 850. We sent 300 wounded further back to 
the rear today. The wounded came in fast last night, and today 
reached the 1,000 mark. 

October 6th, 1918, La-Veuve, France. 

The wounded on the Rheims front were mostly marines — our 
hospitals on the main highway which runs from the city of Chalons 
to Rheims. 

October 9th, 1918, La-Veuve, France. 

Yesterday at 6 o'clock a. m. the 2nd and 36th Divisions, Ameri- 
cans, were sent "over the top" and at 10:30 a. m. the wounded 
commenced to pour in to us. The sights are awful, but we are 
hardened to such sights. This morning, the 10th, they went "over the 
top" again, so we expect to see the wounded coming in within the 
next couple of hours. Last night was cold, freezing ice an inch 
thick. 

October 11th, 1918, La- Veuve, France. 

About five enemy aeroplanes appeared over our camp last night — 
one was buzzing around over us for about half an hour before others 
came, and no bombs were dropped — probably they could not locate 
us. Yesterday about 2 o'clock p. m. an enemy photograph ma- 
chine appeared over us, taking pictures. When they take pictures 
in the daytime, we can always look for the bombing raid the fol- 
lowing night or the next. It is a horried sensation to have them 
over us at night — we are always at their mercy. No place to take 
shelter, and we do not know what second they are going to drop a 
bomb and blow you to pieces, 

October 12th, 1918, La-Veuve, France, 

Our hospital is a small city under canvas. The number of 
American wounded taken care of so far here reached 2,000. Fifty- 
five died so far. It has been raining hard all day. We welcome rain 
for no enemy bombing planes come out on wet days; they can't see 
to fly — the only time that we get any sleep. 

October 13th, 1918, La-Veuve, France, 

The War Department sent us eighty additional men to assist us 
today. We hear that Germany wants to quit invaded territory. We 
are all glad to hear such news, but anxious to finish the job. The 

22 



fighting at the front goes right along daily. The Hun is compelled 
to retreat fast. We sent our last wounded to the rear last night. 
We are ready for a quick getaway. 

German Attitude in Regard to Peace Talk. 

But the real German attitude on the question was expressed a 
few days ago, by the German government working in Strasburg, 
which said: "You talk about the right of people to dispose of them- 
selves. What we Germans understand by that, is our right to do 
as we please with the Alsatians and Lorrainers." Thirdly, by way, 
no doubt, of illustrating his desire to put an end to wanton blood- 
shed, and suffering, the soldiers for whose acts Prince Max as- 
sumes responsibility have deliberately visited Villers-Cotterets every 
day since he made his peace offer in order to bomb the hospitals. 
They visited us most every night and tried to hit us while we were 
there from August 28th to September 13th, 1918. 

My Personal Visit to the Destroyed City of Rheims, France. 

Today I had permission to visit the ruined city of Rheims. Where 
I had an opportunity of viewing the vast ruins of the big city and first 
of all the ruins of the famous Rheims Cathedral, a relic of which I 
brought back with me. All of the towns all the way from La-Veuve 
to Rheims are completely ruined. The Grand Hotel and the Opera 
House are completely demolished. I saw only one civilian while in 
Rheims and he was a visitor. I was told that Rheims was a city of 
about 125,000 population before the war. Only a few French soldiers 
were in Rheims — about twenty all told. The street Rue Libergier 
runs directly in the direction of the main entrance at the front of the 
great Cathedral. The magnificent palace of justice is also demolished. 
The retreating Germans fired the last shot at Rheims Cathedral ten 
days ago. It was here at Rheims, in the year 1431, that a young 
girl, a farmer's daughter, Jeanne d'Arc, preserved the unity of 
France. Leading the French troops, she delivered the city of Orleans, 
which the English King, proclaiming himself King of France, had 
seized. She restored the King of France to his throne and led him 
to Rheims, where he was crowned, stood by his side in the very 
Cathedral bombarded by the Germans since the beginning of the war. 
In 1431 Jeanne d'Arc was burned alive at Rouen, France, by the 
English. 

La-Veuve, France, October 16th, 1918. 

We are awaiting orders to move; so some of our boys and myself 
visited the city of Shalons, France — a beautiful city, large cathedrals 
and public buildings. It has a population of about 30,000. The Ger- 
mans were in Shalons in 1914. 

La- Veuve. France, October 20th, 1918. 

Here, waiting on orders to move. It is very cold in our tents, but 
we make the best of it. We expect to get away tomorrow morning. 

La-Veuve, France, October 22nd. 1918. 

The company is now entrained on railroad, moving to somewhere 
—3 o'clock p. m. 

23 



En Route by Rail from La-Veuve, France. 

October 23rd, 1918, 6:30 a. m. We arrived at the city of Amiens; 
we stopped here for one hour. We passed through the old city of 
Boulogne, France, at 1 :20 p. m. We went into the city through tun- 
nels. At 7 o'clock p. m. we arrived in railroad yards, three miles from 
Dunkirk, France. We are near the Belgium border. During the night 
we moved over the border into Belgium, to the town of Crombeck, 
where we stayed all night, and slept in our tiny little boxcars (match 
boxes on wheels), waiting on orders. 

Crombeck, Belgium, October 24th, 1918. 
We left here at 10 o'clock a. m. en route. 

Elverdindhe, Belgium, October 24th, 1918. 

Eleven forty-five a. m., stopped, waiting for tracks to be repaired, 
blown up. We left at 1:35 p. m. 

Passing Through the Heart of No Man's Land. 

No Man's Land is very well named; for about twenty miles we 
passed through this horrible blown-to-pieces land. In almost every 
foot for miles, as far as the eye could see, the land was torn up by 
great shells. The roadbed of the railroad we passed over had been 
blown away by shell fire; what added to the horrors of this battle- 
ground was — it is a low, marshy country, and if one goes down two 
feet there is water; trenches and dugouts were numerous and full of 
stagnant water; great trees could be seen blown off by shells. AH 
vegetation is dead. It looks to me like a great flood and cyclone had 
struck the place at once; here and there, anywhere, were graves of 
some heroic soldiers. Not even a small building could be seen stand- 
ing. Railroad cars blown to bits, and an engine wrecked by shell fire 
lay beside the track. The old rails were thrown to one side, twisted 
and bent in every direction; narrow-gauge railroads to haul ammuni- 
tion run here and there, but were torn up by bursting shells, one of 
the worst sights we ever witnessed. As we moved slowly over the 
newly-laid track, the sight was similar everywhere. Such are the 
sights we saw in No Man's Land. 

Arrival at Staden, Belgium, October 24th, 1918, 6 o'clock P. M. 

We arrived at Staden, Belgium, in No Man's Land, at 6 o'clock p. 
m. Here we slept all night in the railroad box cars again. 

Staden, Belgiimi, October 25th. 1918. 

This morning we received orders to unload; it is now 11 o'clock 
a. m. 

Staden, Belgium, October 27th, 1918. 

We received 100 wounded from the 37th Division on the Belgium 
front, with the British; we are now in West Flanders, Belgium. The 
ground is very wet here; where our tents are erected there are shell 

24 



holes fourteen feet wide and eight feet deep, and full of water. The 
town of Staden was completely demolished by the Germans before 
they were forced to evacuate. They blew up every house and factory. 
When we arrived not a civilian could be seen. 

Staden, Belgium, November 2nd, 1918. 

We received 1,200 wounded American boys yesterday. Among 
them was one Belgium girl, wounded by shell fire. The Hun night 
air raiders are quite busy around here, too; every night they bang 
away. 

Staden, Belgium, November 7th, 1918. 

During our stay here we took care of 3,918 wounded and sick 
Americans. We buried here 137. The divisions engaged in battle 
here were the 37th Ohio, 28th Division Artillery, Pennsylvania, and 
91st Western Division. We lost more here than any other place. The 
graves of our boys are just a few feet from our tents — a sad scene 
for us when taps are blown over them as they are lowered in the 
graves. Unquestionably France and Flanders, are proving a testing 
ground of souls no less than swords. Here, at this moment, many 
an American lad is finding his own soul in a baptism of blood. War 
is brutal and beastly, if you like; but out of the blood and welter of a 
war-wracked world will be re-born the shining ideals that alone justify 
and dignify human effort and human aspiration. The story of man's 
mastery of the world in which he lives is the story of a man's victory 
over the natural forces by which he is surrounded. The ultimate 
progress of man will be his progressive conquest of the spiritual 
forces of the world, which are like an army set^ in array. Why blood 
and battle are the indispensable elements of a man's re-birth, no 
saint or sage has ever been able to tell us. But the bludgeonings of 
fate are the blows that hammer us into the likeness of reasonable 
beings or into the image of the beast. 

The German Exploding Pencil — Staden, Belgium, November 8th, 1918. 

For the first time the (often heard of) exploding pencil was a 
reality. For Albert Barber of Broaden Diamond, Pa., was brought in 
to us with the fingers of his left hand blown off, and his left eye 
badly injured, by the e.xplosion of a lead pencil he was sharpening. 
It was given to him by one who he thought was a fellow soldier. He 
was with the 28th Division Artillery, Pa., on Flanders front. 

My Personal Visit to the Old City of Bruges, Belgium. 

Staden, Belgium, November 10th, 1918. I was given permission to 
visit the Belgium city of Bruges, which is twenty-one miles from our 
camp. The Germans were forced to evacuate Bruges just a few days 
ago. I talked with men and women who had been under German 
rule for four years; and they had anything but good to say of them, 
or their treatment toward the Belgiums. We were a curiosity to the 
civilians. I was stopped and asked where I was from; I told them 
from the United States, they were all glad to see us. Bruges is cen- 
turies old. We had an opportunity to view the city and its magnificent 

25 



old buildings, such as the great City Hall, with its high tower, built 
in the thirteenth, fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The huge rail- 
road station is worth while seeing. 

My Personal Visit to the Demolished City of Ypres (Epray). 

Staden, Belgium, November 11, 1918. What was once a thriving Bel- 
gium city is no more. I boarded a freight train going through No Man's 
Land, and got off at a little station called Boesinghe. This is 
where the battle line ran for sometime, backward and forward. I 
was now in No Man's Land, and it looked it, I'll assure you. I was 
shown by a Belgian soldier where the line was (pointing to the rail- 
road); he said that was the dividing point for British and Belgiums. 
The Belgiums held from the railroad to the sea, thirty-seven miles, 
and the British from here on down through Ypres, Lille and Mons. 
From Boesinghe I walked along the road that led into the ruined 
city of Ypres, which is three miles away. I walked along the old 
Ypres Canal; here I saw 100 dugouts in the sight of the old canal 
embankment; all kinds of ammunition was thrown about. There were 
several graveyards along the way of buried soldiers. I saw con- 
crete (pill boxes) built inside of ruined houses so they couldn't be 
seen; great guns were along the road; large trees blown right off 
by shell fire, all were dead and burned. I finally arrived in what 
was once Ypres. Here I saw crumbling walls. Part of the big Ypres 
Cathedral still stands. Every factory and home is blown to pieces. 
I found no civilians there. It has been one of the greatest battle- 
grounds of the war, thousands on both sides died here. For four 
years the line was deadlocked. I arrived at Ypres at 9 o'clock a. m. 
and left at 2 o'clock p. m. I walked back over the same route to 
Boesinghe Station in No Man's Land, where I boarded a train for 
Staden, our camp. Here at Boesinghe I talked with another Bel- 
gian that told me that it was a terrible ordeal, he told me he stood 
in water in trenches here up to his waist. And nothing but a few 
piles of brick marked the town of Boesinghe. The ruins of Ypres, 
which is not to be restored, are stamped on the memory of hundreds 
of thousands of English soldiers, as a supreme symbol of the horrors 
of war. Commenting on the fact that a new Ypres is to rise, but not 
on the old site, and that the ruins are to be untouched, by orders of 
the Belgium government, thus remaining the most eloquent of monu- 
ments to British dead of twenty desperate battles thereabout. The 
ghosts of the old town will be the eternal witness, both to the Allies' 
heroic will and to Germany's sin. One peculiar coincidence with 
the British line at Mons. The British started at Mons, Belgium, but 
was forced to retreat back into France. Finally after four years of 
war, the Americans, French and British started the final drive. Now 
then, the British ended at Mons, Belgium, where they started four 
years ago. 

The Great German Gun Implacement at Staden, Belgium. 

Here I saw a great German gun implacement. It was a hole in 
the ground of about nine by twenty feet in diameter. In this was a 
great steel base; on top of this was a rotary base that had 150 steel 
balls, each ten inches in diameter, that the gun rotated on. Three 

2fi 



unused shells were there, each shell was sixteen inches in diameter 
and thirty-two inches long. The Germans fired at Dunkirk, France, a 
distance of twenty-five miles. , 

Staden, Belgium, November 16th, 1918. 

Hostilities ceased on the 11th day of November, 1918, at 11 
o'clock p. m., the eleventh month of the year (French time). The 
weather here in Staden is mild but foggy, and very wet ground, much 
mud to wade through. 

Staden, Belgium, December 10th, 1918. 

We are moving from Staden today. This time 90 auto trucks 
conveyed us to Malo, France, near Dunkirk. 

Male, France, December Uth, 1918. 

We are now in camp along the sand hills, very near the beach, 
and close to the Casino Hotel. Malo is a suburb of Dunkirk. We 
are using the Casino Hotel as a hospital. We left Staden, Belgium, 
at 9 o'clock, the 10th, arrived at the city of Dunkirk at 2 o'clock p. m. 
Passing through the heart of Dunkirk, arriving at Malo at 2:20 p. m. 
On our way overland from Staden, Belgium here, we had an elegant 
pportunity to witness a new sector of the battle line in West 
Flanders, Belgium. It was wonderful, yet horrible. The once big 
city of Dixmude is completely wiped from the earth. Only piles 
of dirt, rubbish and brick, mark the spot where Dixmude stood. 
Trenches and wire entanglements everywhere, and the earth every- 
where, is full of shell holes. We also passed through the heart of 
Furnes, Belgium; this city was in fairly good condition, but bombed 
many places at night by air raiders. It is a matter of inexpressible 
difficulty to fully describe the ruins. 

Malo, France, December 16th, 1918. 

We now have registered 270 patients, coming from the 91st, 
37th and 28th Divisions, operating in this section; mostly sick. The 
wind is blowing hard, and blew down two of our large tents today. 
The cities of Dunkirk and Malo was bombarded by sea, air and 
land guns, 800 times in four years. 

Malo, France, Near Dunkirk, December 25th, 1918 — Christmas. 

It is a fine day today; we have sporting events on the beach here. 
Christmas gifts from the American Red Cross were given to all today. 
The gifts were stockings filled with candies of all kinds and many 
articles of value, watches, handkerchiefs, etc. They all come from 
the citizens of Hartford, Conn., to whom many of us wrote and 
thanked for their kindness. While at Malo we had 1,029 sick here. 

Malo, Near Dunkirk, France, January 22nd, 1919, at 12:25 P. M. 

The company is now on the railroad train ready to depart for 
LeHavre, France, along the coast; we are now going towards 
home. We are loaded in these little dinky box cars as usual. 

27 



LeHavre, France, January 23rd, 1919. 

We arrived by rail at 3:30 p. ni. We detrained here and marched 
to the docks. Here we were camped in British tents, a British camp. 
We met many British, Canadian, New Zealand and Portugal troops 
here. 

Le Havre, France, January 27th, 1919. 

The company is leaving here by railroad today. Destination is 
Brest, France, in box cars, as usual. 

January 28th, 1919, En route on train for Brest, France. 

January 29th, 1919, at Kerhuon, France. The company arrived 
here from Le Havre at 3 p. m. We hiked it to Camp Kerhuon, a 
distance of three miles. , 

Camp Kerhuon, Near Brest, France. 

February 1st, 1919. The camp is overlooking the Bay of Brest, 
the most beautiful spot the company has been in France. It is lo- 
cated on a hill about 250 feet above the sea level. You can see the 
ships in the bay. 

Farewell to France. 

Brest, February 7th, 1919. We are leaving France. We have 
embarked on the Dutch ship, Rotterdam, out in the Bay of Brest. 
4:15 p. m. We are all hungry. The next mess on the boat is 7 
o'clock p. m. There are several thousand on board. 

Brest, France. 

February 8th, 1919, 9:50 a. m. The ship has just started to leave 
the bay for America. We laid in the bay all night, loading. 

Homeward Bound on the S. S. Rotterdam. 

At sea, February 10th, 1919. All is well. 

February 11th, 1919, at sea. 

February 12th, 1919, at sea. 

February 13th, 1919, at sea; many seasick. 

February 14th, 1919, at sea. 

February 15th, 1919. at sea. 

February 16th, 1919, at sea. 

February 17th, 1919, in New York Bay, New York City," 

We are all glad to see America again. We docked at pier at foot 
of Fifth Street, Hoboken, N. J., the morning of February 18th, 1919. 

A Grand Reception at New York City. 

The Steamship Rotterdam was escorted up the bay by a lighter 
bearing the following inscription, "A Mayor's Committee, City of 
New York." The band played on the mayor's boat, then our band 
played — 367th Regiment band that came with us. After we got off 
the boat we were given candy of all kinds, handkerchiefs, postcards, 
chewing gum, chocolate, hot coflFee and other things. Here we got 
on the ferry boat and were taken to Long Island City passenger 

28 



station, where a special train from the Long Island Railroad was 
waiting to take us to Camp Upton, New York. Here we were given 
hot coffee again. We left Long Island City at 3:30 p. m. and arrived 
at Camp Upton, Long Island, N. Y., at 7 o'clock p. m. 

At Camp Upton, Long Island, N. Y. 

February 19th, 1919. The company is doing nothing, only wait- 
ing for the Government to muster us out of service. 

Camp Upton, Long Island, N. Y. 

February 21st, 1919. The entire company went through the de- 
lousing station today to get rid of all our cooties. Oh, Boy! we all 
had plenty of cooties while at the front. 

Camp Upton, Long Island, N. Y. 

February 22nd, 1919. Still here. Washington's Birthday. 

Discharged. 

Camp Upton, Long Island, N. Y., March 1st, 1919. The first 
seventy-one to be discharged left for their homes this morning, only 
the boys from Rhode Island, New York and Connecticut were mus- 
tered out here at Upton. 

Leaving Camp Upton, N. Y. 

March 9th, 1919. I, and a few others, are leaving here today for 
Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, Ohio. 

Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, Ohio. 
March 10th, 1919. We arrived here today. 

Mustered out of the Service. 

Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, Ohio, March 17th, 1919 — St. Patrick's 
Day. I, and others, were honorably discharged from the Army today. 
We leave by a special train to Columbus, Ohio, on our way to our 
homes, thus ending our career in the Army. We return mighty glad 
and satisfied we did our duty for our country and arrived back home 
safe in the greatest country in the world, a combination of all the 
nations of the world and the most favored one. 



29 



Copy of General Order in France. 

(Copy) . (G. O. 232) 

G. H. Q. 

American Expeditionary Forces. 
General Orders. No. 232. France, Dec. 19, 1918. 

It is with a sense of gratitude for its splendid accomplishment, which will live 
through all history, that I record in General Orders a tribute to the victory of the 
First Army in the Meuse-Argonne battle. 

Tested and strengthened by the reduction of the St. Mihiel salient, for more than 
six weeks you battered against the pivot of the enemy line on the western front. It 
was a position of imposing natural strength, stretching on both sides of the Meuse 
River from the bitterly contested hills of Verdun to the almost impenetrable forest 
of the Argonne, a position, moreover, fortified by four years of labor designed to ren- 
der it impregnable, a position held with the fullest resources of the enemy. That 
position you broke utterly, and thereby hastened the collapse of the enemy's military 
power. 

Soldiers of all the divisions engaged under the First, Third and Fifth Corps, 
the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th. 7th. 26th, 28th, 29th, 32nd, 33rd. 35th, 3/th, 42nd, 77th, 
78th. 79th, 80th, S2nd. 89th, 90th and 91st — you will be long remembered for the 
stubborn persistence of your progress, your storming of obstinately defended ma- 
chine gwn nests, your penetration, yard by yard, of woods and ravines, your heroic 
resistance in the face of counter attacks supported by powerful artillery fire. For 
more than a month, from the initial attack of .September 26th. you fought your way 
slowly through the Argonne, through the woods and over hills west of the Meuse, 
you slowly enlarged your hold on the Cotes de Meuse to the east, and then, on the 
first of November, your attack forced the enemy into flight. Pressing his retreat, 
you cleared the entire left bank of the Mexise south of Sedan, and then stormed 
the heights on the right bank and drove him into the plain beyond. 

Vour achievement, which is scarcely to be equalled in American history, must re- 
main a source of proud satisfaction to the troops who participated in the last cam- 
paign of the war. The American people will remember it as the realization of the 
hitherto potential strength of the American contribution toward the cause to which 
they had sworn allegiance. There can be no greater reward for a soldier or for a 
soldier's memory. 

This order will be read to all organizations at the first assembly formation after 
its receipt. JOHN J. TERSHING, 

General, Commander-in-Chief, 
American Expeditionary Forces. 
OFFICIAL— Robert S. Davis, Adjutant General. 



FOE'S VENGEANCE. 

A report of American engineers, who have followed in the wake 
of the retreating Germans, shows the diabolical means resorted to by 
the Hims to wreak their vengeance on their foes. Characteristic de- 
vices used by them in their retreat include: 

Dugouts — Strings attached to branches apparently used to camou- 
flage the entrance, were attached to mines. Detonators were placed 
in charcoal and rubbish heaps. Fuses connected with explosive 
charges were fastened in stoves or fireplaces. Protruding nails when 
stepped on exploded mines. Shovels, picks apparently struck at 
random in heaps of earth, when removed will explode mines. Doors, 
stove lids, bureau drawers when opened or removed will set off mines. 
The loose board of a step or stairway when trod on frequently 
caused an explosion. 

Roads — The slight depression caused by the passage of vehicles 
will explode the detonator of a mine gallery under the road where 
150 or 200 shells are placed. 

Barbed wire entanglements — The wire carefully concealed in 
grass, causes the explosion of mines. Mines are often found under 
bricks or tiles covered with hay or manure. 

The engineer's report was based upon actual discoveries. Enough 
has been learned to show that the Germans are resorting to every 
devilish device they can find and are conducting themselves in re- 
treat, as in advance, far worse than any other foe in the history of 
warfare. 

30 



CONQUEST AND KULTUR 

The present war is in the last analysis distinctly a war between 
ideals, and thus between the peoples who uphold them. On the one 
hand are the peoples who have faith in themselves and in each other 
and in the ordered ways of law and justice by which they have sought 
in the past to regulate both their domestic and international relations. 
Upon the other hand, are those whose ideals have been fixed for them 
by dynastic aims and ambitions which could only be translated into 
reality through subservience to authority and by the unrestricted use 
of force. The first group has long had a unity in its fundamental atti- 
tude which it did not realize until the war endangered and revealed 
them. The great self-governing nations, England and France, long- 
ago passed on to America the best of what they had established or 
dreamed of establisliing in the way of popular government. Our war 
for independence left our institutions and ways of thinking and acting 
distinctly English, and it aided the English in their own struggle to 
bring monarchy and political aristocracy into subordination to the 
will of the great English nation. It also revealed to us how much 
we had in common in our newer world ideals with the Liberalism of 
that France which had already found its thought about human rights 
and relations in advance of the Bourbon institutions and ideas that 
governed it politically. It should never be forgotten that Burke and 
Chatham and Fox and Barre in England, and Lafayette and Turgot 
and Beaumarchaise in France held political ideas which made them 
the supporters of the American colonies and the intellectual com- 
rades of Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson. Here in this America 
they saw their ideals moulded into realities and recognized that we 
were fighting their battles and that a blow struck at autocracy's 
effort to rule America would shake its weakening hold upon both 
France and England. Together these three great nations have climbed 
upwards toward the same sunlit heights. Their band has now become 
a goodly one as the South American republic, Italy. Belgium, Nor- 
way, Japan, China and at last Russia have caught the vision. In 
varied ways and in different tongues these people have sought to rea- 
lize and express their idea that government is an instrument de- 
vised by men for the benefit of human beings. They have held that 
liberty and law spring from the same soil, that reason is the only 
conqueror that does not rule slaves, that the state is an agency, not 
an end or an entity, and is something larger and better than any man 
only when it helps every man to be something larger and better, in 
some way more just, more humane, more enlightened, more thought- 
less of self and thoughtful of his fellow men. They have not perman- 
ently sought to restrict to one class as privilege what is the common 
propertj' of all, nor to deny to any nation because it is small that 
opportunity for self-realization which is the easy heritage of the more 
favored. The democracy they have won for themselves, that has 
made citizens where before there were subjects, they have almost un- 
consciously come to feel must touch hands with other self-governing 
peoples and all must uphold an international law that expresses for 
all nations the ideals which each has found for itself. In all these 
things America has allied its better thought with the better thought 
of the nations which have taken their place in this unorganized league 
of liberty, this enlarging commonwealth of justice, this newer policy 

31 



of a common humanity. Its ideals, from the days of Otis and Adams 
and Henry and Washington, through Monroe and Webster and 
Lincohi, have been interpreted to it over and over again and have 
echoed back to us in the language of Bright and Gladstone and Morley 
and Bryce, of Mazzini and Cavour, of Lamartine and Thiers, and 
Gambetta. We in America have seen these other peoples rallying in 
this war to the defense of these ideals, the liberal world's common 
property. And now the call has come to us anew voiced in measured 
words that those who in the past have toiled and striven, have fought 
and fallen, would know as the spoken message of their salient sacri- 
fice. This America of ours has heard the call and stands embattled 
for the ideals that represent a heritage, an achievement, a hope. 

America knows what it is defending. Does it as clearly understand 
what it is fighting against? Does it realize that other peoples have 
had imposed upon them ways of thinking between which and our 
thought and the thought of all forward looking people there can be 
no compromise? Does it know that the ideals of government which 
it struck down in its farthest past, bringing new liberties to all Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples — the ideals which France banished with the 
Bourbons and the Bonapartes, and Italy drove out with the Haps- 
burgs, ideals that crashed to earth in Russia but yesterday with the 
fall of the Romanoffs — does it know that these ideals now dominate 
the Teutonic powers and make them the fitting allies of the Turk in 
thought and purpose and method? 

Three years of war as conducted by Prussian militarism have done 
much to acquaint us with the purposes and methods of the medievally 
minded group which controls the Central Powers. Yet a full and 
convincing proof of the distortion of the purposes of a whole nation 
can come only from the utterances of those who planned and pro- 
moted the war. One may not draw an indictment against a whole 
nation, but it is at least permissible to allow its responsible leaders, 
intellectual and political, to define the creed according to which they 
have shaped the thought and action of the German people in the past 
generation. Against such a confession the guilty can not enter a 
plea in abatement or avoidance, neither now nor hereafter. The pied 
pipers of Prussianism who have led the German people to conquest 
and to ignominy and to infamy are here given their unending day 
before the court of public opinion. It is a motley throng who are 
here heard in praise of war and international suspicion and conquest 
and intrigue and devastation — emperors, kings, princes, poets, philos- 
ophers, educators, journalists, legislators, manufacturers, militarists, 
statesmen, line upon line, precept upon precept, they have written 
this ritual of envy and broken faith and rapine. Before them is the 
war god to whom they have otlered up their reason and their human- 
ity, behind them the misshapen image they have made of the German 
people, leering with bloodstained visage over the ruins of civilization. 

There is no thinking human being who would not gladly blot out 
the whole ugly record of these pages both because of what it advo- 
cates and because of the untold anguish its translation into deeds 
has caused. But it can never be done. 

Only its full and fair presentation can enable the American people 
to know what it is from which they are defending their land, their 
institutions and their very lives. Only from such a carefully docu- 

32 



merited self-revelation of German ideals can they fully know what 
they must overcome — not only they but the German people them- 
selves, for no peace, no matter when it may come nor what may be 
its terms, can ever make of Germany, "a fit partner for a league of 
honor" until the German people have driven out the spirit which 
inspired these utterances made in their name. 



CONQUEST AND KULTUR 

AIMS OF THE GERMANS IN THEIR OWN WORDS 

Printed By Permission From the U. S. Government. 



THE MISSION OF GERMANY. 

"Germany's mission is to rejuvenate the exhausted members of 
Europe by a diffusion of Germanic blood." 

(A. Hummel, Handbuch, der Erdkunde, 1876, a text for school 
children, quoted by Guilland, Modern Germany and her His- 
torians, 1915, p. 154.) 



"We Germans have a far greater and more urgent duty toward 
civilization to perform than the great Asiatic power. * * * We 
* * * can only fulfill it by the sword." 

(F. von Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, 1911, trans. 
1914, p. 258.) 



We have become a nation of wrath; we think only of the war. 
* * * We execute God Almighty's will, and the edicts of His 
justice we will fulfill, imbued with holy rage, in vengeance upon 
the ungodly. God calls us to murderous battles, even if worlds should 
thereby fall to ruins. * * * We are woven together like the 
chastening lash of war; we flame aloft like the lightning; like gar- 
dens of roses our wounds blossom at the gate of Heaven. We thank 
Thee, Lord God. Thy wrathful call obliterates our sinful nature; 
with Thine iron rod we smite all our enemies in the face." 
(Poem by Fritz Philippi.) (B., pp. 54-55.) 



"In the midst of the world war Germany lies like a peaceful gar- 
den of God behind the wall of her armies. Then the poet hears the 
giant strides of the new armor-clad Germany; the earth trembles, the 
nations shriek, the old era sinks into ruin. Formerly German thought 
was shut up in her comer, but now the world shall have its coat cut 
according to German measure, and as far as our swords flash and 
German blood flows, the circle of the earth shall come luider the 
tutelage of German activity." 

(Poem by Fritz Philippi, entitled "World-Germany.") (B.. 
p. 47.) 

33 



"The whole history of the world is neither more nor less than a 
preparation for the time when it shall please God to allow the affairs 
of the universe to be in German hands." 

(From a speech by "an educational authority in East Prus- 
sia." Quoted by the Dagens Nyheter (Swedish daily), July 
21, 1917.) 



"The European conspiracy has woven around us a web of lies and 
slander. As for us we are truthful, our characteristics are humanity, 
srentleness, conscientiousness, the virtues of Christ. In a world of 
wickedness we represent love, and God is with us." 

(Adolf Lasson. in two letters to a friend in Holland, Sep- 
tember, 1914. Bernadotte Schmitt, England and Germany, 
1916, pp. 93-94. Lasson is a distinguished professor of philoso- 
phy in the University of Berlin. 



"Not to live and let live, but to live and direct the lives of others, 
that is power. To bring peoples under our rational influence in order 
to put their affairs on a better footing, that is more refined power." 

(Dr. Carl Peters. Not und Weg. 1915, pp. 13-14 (G. p. 343.). 
Dr. Peters is an eminent German traveler and writer on colonial 
matters, one of the foiuiders of the Pan-German League, and 
an ardent advocate of colonial expansion. Passages such as 
the above serve to answer Friedrich Naumann's native inquiry, 
"Why is it that we Germans of the Empire are, during this war, 
so little liked by the rest of the world?") 



"The German race is called to bind the earth under its control, to 
exploit the natural resources and the physical powers of man, to use 
the passive races in subordinate capacity for the development of its 
Kulture." 

(Ludwig Woltmann, Politische Anthropologic, 1903. Quoted 
by Andler. Le Pangermanisme philosophique, 1917, p. 27Z. 
Woltman was a socialist and publicist.) 



"With the help of Turkey, India and China may be conquered. 

Having conquered these Germany should civilize and Germanize the 

world, and the German language would become the world langiiage." 

(Theodore Springman (a manufacturer) in Deutschland und 

der Orient. 1915.) ^ (G. p. 308.) 



GERMAN PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS RIGHT BECAUSE THEY 

NL^MBER 87.0lX\0OO souls. Our fathers have left us much to do." 

(Tannenberg. Gross-Deutschland; die arbeit des 20ten 

Tahrhunderts, 1^11. pp. 230-231. Tannenberg is probably a 

pseudonym. This work has been called "fantastic" by one 



34 



Pan-German. It was more extreme than many of the works 
only because it embodied all the various schemes of gagres- 
sion.) 



"The war which seems approaching will decide our whole future. 
As far as we are concerned, the question is whether we are to main- 
tain our present position in the political world and become a world 
power, or whether we are to be pushed back and become a purely 
continental state of second rank. I trust that every German may bear 
that alternative in mind, and that it may be quite clear to our govern- 
ment how much is at stake. All other considerations must recede 
into the background when the will to power and to victory is concern- 
ed. Every individual German ought to be governed by the determin- 
ation to win that victory, no matter how difficult this may prove it 
to be." 

(From an article by General Bernhardi on "Unsere Zukunst" 
in Hannoversches Tageblatt, Dec. 28, 1912.) (N., pp. 98-99.) 



"We know it; the German eagle will victoriously unfold his pinions 
and ascend to a prouder height than ever. And we shall also know 
how to keep a firm hold for all time to come on the countries which 
are fertilized with German blood. Our ardent love for our German 
Fatherland makes us strong to make the greatest sacrifices. BUT 
LET US, THEREFORE. ALSO KEEP A FIRM HOLD ON 
WHAT WE HAVE WON. AND ACQUIRE IN ADDITION 
WHAT WE NEED. Beyond bloody war is splendid victory — let that 
be the watchword of this great time." 

(Deputy Bassermann at a farewell gathering of the National 
Liberal Party, of the Central Committee, of which he was 
president, quoted in Vorwarts, December 5, 1914.) 



"We have become a flourishing, powerful empire, blessed with 
material possessions, and we have now won the right with sword in 
hand to make even greater demands. * * * Ever forward must 
be our watchword in the struggle of the peoples. We stand on the 
great divide. WORLD POWER FOR GREATER GERMANY OR 
DOWNFALL." 

(Benedikt Haag, Die Weltkommission Deutschlands im 
gegenwartigen europaischen Krieg, 1914, pp. 65-66.) 



You must in ceaseless labor offer all the powers of body and soul 
to the building up and development of our troops, and, just as my 
grandfather labored for his land forces, so, undeterred, I shall carry 
through to its completion the work of reorganizing my navy in order 
that it may stand justified at the side of my army and that 
THROUGH IT THE GERMAN EMPIRE MAY ALSO BE IN 
A POSITION TO WIN OUTWARDLY THE PLACE WHICH 
SHE HAS NOT YET ATTAINED. 

35 



"When both arc united I hope to be in a position, firmly trusting 
in the leadership of God, to carry into effect the sajang of Frederick 
William I: "IF ONE WISHES TO DECIDE ANYTHING IN 
THE WORLD. IT CANNOT BE DONE WITH THE PEN UN- 
LESS THE PEN IS SUPPORTED BY THE FORCE OF THE 
SWORD'." 

(From the Kaiser's speech. Tan. 1. 1900. Gauss, pp. 156- 
LS7.) 



WAR AS PART OF THE DIVINE ORDER. 

"WHOEVER CANNOT PREVAIL UPON HIMSELF TO 
APPROVE FROM THE BOTTOM OF HIS HEART THE SINK- 
ING OF THE LUSITANIA, WHOEVER CANNOT CONQUER 
HIS SENSE OF THE GIGANTIC CRUELTY TO UNNUM- 
BERED PERFECTLY INNOCENT VICTIMS * * * AND GIVE 
HIMSELF UP TO HONEST DELIGHT AT THIS VICTORI- 
OUS EXPLOIT OF GERMAN DEFENSIVE POWER— HIM 
WE JUDGE TO BE NO TRUE GERMAN." 

(Pastor B. Baumgarten. in the pamphlet series entitled 
"Deutsche Rcden in Schwerer Zeit," 1914-15.) (Archer, p. 
186.) 



" * * * Wc Germans and Cliristians are also taught by honor 
and duty that there can be no peace for the souls of the dead or the 
living until a conflict is settled by the victory and triumph of our 
arms. * * * Pagan belief and Christian faith alike teach us that 
we should give our lives for our brothers, for our fatherland, for our 
Kaiser and his Empire, for the victory of our arms, in order that there 
may be peace for the living and rest for the dead. Therefore war is 
the most sublime and most holj' expression of human activity." 

(Tungdeutschland-Post, a weekly paper for juvenile readers, 
Jan. 25. 1^13.) (N., p. 1.) 



"War is the noblest and holiest expression of human activity. 
For us. too. the glad, great hour of battle will strike. Still and deep 
in the German heart must live the joy of battle and longing for it. 
Let us ridicule to the utmost the old women in breeches who fear war 
and deplore it as cruel and revolting. No; WAR IS BEAL^TIFL^L. 
Its august sublimity elevates the human heart beyond the earthly and 
tlie common. In the cloud palaces above sit the heroes, Frederick 
the Great, and Bliicher, and all the men of action — the Great Em- 
peror. Moltko, Roon, Bismarck, are there as well, but not the old 
women who would take away our joy in war. When here on earth 
a battle is won by German arms and the faithful dead ascend to 
heaven, a Potsdam lance corporal will call the guard to the door and 
"Old Fritz" (Frederick the Great), springing from his golden throne, 

36 



will give the command to present arms. THAT IS THE HEAVEN 
OF YOUNG GERMANY." 

(Jung-Deutschland, official organ of Young Germany, Oc- 
tober, 1913. (B., p. 212). Such are the doctrines taught to 
3'oung boys of about the same age as our Boy Scouts.) 



"Because only in war all the virtues which militarism regards 
highly are given a chance to unfold, because only in war the truly 
heroic comes into play, for the realization of which on earth militar- 
ism is above all concerned; therefore it seems to us who are filled 
with the spirit of militarism that war is a holy thing, the holiest thing 
on earth; and this high estimate of war in its turn makes an essential 
ingredient of the military spirit. There is nothing that tradespeople 
complain of so much as that we regard it as holy." 

(Werner Sombart, Handler und Helden, 1915, p. 88. Sombart 
is professor in the Handelschochschule in Berlin, and one of 
the leading German economists.) 



"One single highly cultivated German warrior of those who are, 
alas, falling in thousands represents a higher intellectual and moral 
life value than hundreds of the raw children of nature whom England 
and France, Russia and Italy oppose to them." 

(Professor Haeckel (Jena), Ewigkeit: Weltkricgsgedanken, 
p. 36. Haeckel is one of the best known zoologists in the 
world.") 



"Must kultur rear its domes over mountains of corpses, oceans 
of tears, and the death rattle of the conquered? Yes; it must. * * * 
The might of the conqueror is the highest law before which the con- 
quered must bow." 

(Karl A. Kuhn (of Charlottenburg), Die wahren Ursachendes 
Kriegs. 1914, p. 11.) 



"Our future lies in our hands. Small men will talk finance and 
whine that we cannot afford it. We can find the necessary funds 
easily, in case of need, by loan. * * * Germany does not lack money. 
What we want is a firm will to greatness. Then only shall we obtain 
greatness. Everyone must do his best. All true Gerr ans must 
gather round the Emperor, ready to give their blood and their treas- 
ure for the honor, the greatness, and the future of the German nation. 
'Through war to victory'." 

(F. von Bernhardi, Britain as Germany's Vassal (1912) trans., 
1914, pp. 233, 234. For German title, see p. 33.) 

37 



"Each of us must keep himself fit for arms and also prepared in 
his mind for the great solemn hour when the Emperor calls us to the 
standard — the hour when we no longer belong to ourselves, but to 
the fatherland with all the forces of our mind and our body; for all 
these faculties must be brought to the highest exertion, to that 'will 
to victory' which has never been without success in history." 

(The Crown Prince, in Deutschland in Waffen, May, 1913.) 



(Speaking of Britain:) "Our just hate is too deep, too universal. 
Every German, every warrior abroad, the boy in his play, the gray- 
haired man sitting at home in quiet thought, all aflame for the 
reckoning with England. That for them is victory, and whether 
they get it or not — we cannot tell yet — hate will further devour, it 
will be passed on to our children and children's children." 

(Wilhelm Kahl, professor and one time rector at the Uni- 
versity of Berlin, Deutsche Reden in Schwerer Zeit, 1914, I, 
pp. 182-83.) 



"We are compelled to carry on this war with a cruelty, a ruthless- 
ness, an employment of every imaginable device unknown in any 



previous war." 



(Pastor Baumgarten, in Deutsche Reden in Schwerer Zeit, 
1914-15.) (Archer, p. 86.) 



"We must not look for permanent peace as a result of this war. 
Heaven defend Germany from that." 

(Oskar A. H. Schmitz, in Das wirkliche Deutschland, 1914, 
p. 19. Schmitz is a writer on politics and literature.) 



"Our position in the world is happily such that if certain sacri- 
fices must be made in the cause of peace, other nations must first be 
called upon to make them; they must be demanded from Germany 
only in the last resort." 

(Friedrich Lange, Reines Deutschtum, 1904, p. 214. (A., p. 
54.) Lange is the founder and president of the Deutschbund, 
a society formed in 1894 to push German colonization in 
Poland and Hungary.) 



"Since Bismarck retired there has been a complete change of pub- 
lic opinion. It is no longer proper to say 'Germany is satisfied.' 
Our historical development and our economic needs show that we 
are at once more hungry for territory, and this situation compels 
Germany to follow paths unforseen by Bismarck." 

(Daniel Frymann, Wen Ich der Kaiser ware, 1911, 21st ed. 
1914, p. 9. Fryman's work has been widely read in Germany, 
much more widely, indeed, than Bernhardi.) 

38 



Greater Germany is the goal of the twentieth century. We shall 
fill Middle Europe with an empire of racial vigor. We shall then be 
in a position to meet the further duties and demands that are in store 
for us." 

(Tannenberg, Gross-Deutschland: die Arbeit des 20th Jahr- 

hunderts, 199, p. 87.) 



"Only a Germany that reaches from the Ems to the Danube, from 
Memel to Trieste, to about the Bug, can compel peace in Europe 
without imposing a lasting burden on her inhabitants. For only such 
a Germany can feed herself, only such a Germany can defeat France 
and Russia. * * * Since, then, all the world desires peace, all 
the world must desire such a Germany," etc. 

(Lagarde, Deutsche Schriften (1878), 1891, pp. 11-314. Paul 
de Lagarde (1827-91), whose real name was Boetticher, was a 
theologian and professor at Gottingen.) 



"Do not let us forget the civilizing task which the decrees of 
Providence have assigned to us. Just as Prussia was destined to be 
the nucleus of Germany, so the regenerated Germany shall be the 
nucleus of a future empire of the West. And in order that no one 
shall be left in touch we proclaim from henceforth that our contin- 
ental nation has a right to the sea, not only to the North Sea, but to 
the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Hence we intend to absorb 
one after another all the provinces which neighbor on Prussia. We 
will successively annex Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Northern Swit- 
zerland, then Trieste and Venice, finally northern France, from the 
Sambre to the Loir. This program we fearlessly pronounce. It is 
not the work of a madman. The empire we intend to found will be 
no Utopia. We have ready to hand the means of founding it, and no 
coalition in the world can stop us." 

(Bronsart von Schellendorf, quoted by H. A. L. Fisher in 
The War, Its Causes and Issues, 1914, p. 16.) 



"We must keep our powder dry. (If war comes) no peace should 
be concluded without the acquisition by the German Empire of the 
French part of Flanders in Belgium and all of Luxemburg." * * * 
"Holland needs our settlers and our might for its overseas posses- 
sions, which of itself it can not protect and develop. We need these 
new Dutch territories, already fertilized by German blood, for the 
indispensable expansion of our economic dominions. We need free 
traffic on a German Rhine to its mouth, a traffic which the silent 
resistance of Holland now keeps from us. 

" * * * If Holland were merely a continental power, this 
alliance would only come about when Germany was ready to impose 

39 



ner jusi tiaiiiis uy luicc. jdui as luc vasi iiaiis-uuccum; pusscssiuiis ui 
Holland are daily crumbling away under a growing menace, the 
merchant princes of the Amstel and the Meuse are impelled by con- 
siderations of personal interest to make common cause with us." 

(Fritz Bley, Die alldeutsche Bewegung und die Niederlande, 
1897, pp. 6-7.) 



"As to what political rights to give to the inhabitants of the new 
territories and as to what guaranties are necessary to further German 
influence and industrial life, we will merely refer to what we have 
said about France. The war indemnity to be exacted from Russia 
should, to a large extent, consist in the surrender of territory." 

(Petition of the Six Industrial Associations to the Imperial 
Chancellor, May 20, 1915.) (G. 126-27.) 



"The lands we shall demand from Russia must be extensive 
enough to maintain permanently all Roumanians, even those of 
Austria and Turkey, in Bessarabia and to the northeast of Bessa- 
rabia, * * * as subjects of King Charles. This policy is some- 
what Assyrian, but there is no other way. The Germans are a peace- 
ful people, but they are convinced that they have a right to live as 
Germans and that they have a mission for all nations of the earth." 

(Paul de Lagarde, Deutsche Schriften (1878) 1891, p. 391.) 



EXPANSION TO THE SOUTHEAST. 

"In this nineteenth century, when Germany has become the first 
power in the world, are we incapable of doing what our ancestors 
did? Germany must lay her mighty grasp upon Asia Minor. * * * 

"The Turk has lost his rights, not only from the moral but also 
from the strictly legal point of view. At the Congress of Berlin in 
1878, he gave undertakings, not one of which he has kept. His claims 
are nullified. 

(All Europe may be set ablaze.) "But if the health and life of 
Germany require this mortal and terrible remedy, let us not hesitate 
to apply it; so be it. God is the judge. I accept the awful responsi- 
bility. * * * God never forsakes a good German." 

(Amicus Patriae, Armenian and Kreta, eine Lebensfrage 
fiir Deutschland, 1896, pp. 13, 15, 16, (A., p. 39.) These words 
regarding the present ally of Germany make strange reading 
now.) 



"Every day makes it clearer how ineradicably established is one 
of the prizes of victory won by the Central Powers; it consists in the 
linking up with the nearest East. The vast territory from Belgrade 



40 



to Constantinople, Bagdad, and beyond can never again be torn from 
its political, military, and economic connections with central Europe. 
Whatever the fate of Poland and Belgium, Constantinople and Sofia 
are safe from subjection. Serbia and Roumania can do us no further 
harm. And this even Wilson, to whom so much the course of things 
in Europe is incomprehensive, will come to understand in time." 

(Dr. Heinrich Friedjung in Vossische Zcitung, Feb. 14, 1917. 
H. Friedjung is the leading Austrian historian and a strong 
advocate of close political and economic alliance between Aus- 
tria and Germany.) 



SUBORDINATION OF FRANCE. 

"In the first place, our political position would be considerably 
consolidated if we could finally get rid of the standing danger that 
France will attack us on a favorable occasion, so soon as we find 
ourselves involved in complications elsewhere. In one way or an- 
other we must square our account with France if we wish for a free 
hand in our international policy. This is the first and foremost con- 
dition of a sound German policy, and since the hostility of France 
once for all can not be removed by peaceful overtures, the matter 
must be settled by force of arms. France must be so completely 
crushed that she can never again come across our path." 

(F. von Bernhardi, Germany and the Newt War (1911), trans, 
1914. pp. 105-106.) 



"Whatever Providence may hold in reserve for Germany, it is on 
France that will fall the task of paying the costs, but in another 
measure than 44 years ago. It will be no paltry five billions they will 
have to pay to ransom themselves, but perhaps thirty. The Holy 
Mother of God at Lourdes will have much to do if she undertakes, 
even through miracles, the task of healing all the bones that our 
soldiers will break in the bodies of the unfortunate inhabitants on the 
other side of the Vosges. Poor France! There is yet time for her 
to change her plans, but in a few hours it will be too late. Then 
France will receive blows that will be remembered for many genera- 
tions." 

(National-Zeitung, July 31, 1914. Quoted by Dampierre, 
L' Allemagne et le droit des gens, 1915, p. 105.) 



(Speaking of France in the event of a war:) "The victorious Ger- 
man people will be in a position to demand that the menace of the 
French forever cease. France then must be crushed. We must de- 
mand further, that so much of French soil be ceded to us as we shall 
need for final security. Then will be the time to consider the evacu- 
ation of which we have spoken. We would finally take such of her 
colonial possessions as we need," etc. 

(Daniel Frymann, Wenn ich der Kaiser ware (1911), 21st ed. 
1914. p. 152.) 

41 



"For the sake of our own existence we must ruthlessly weaken her 
(France) both politically and economically, and must improve our 
military and strategical position with regard to her. For this purpose 
in our opinion it is necessary radically to improve our whole western 
front from Belfort to the Coast. Part of the North French Channel 
coast we must acqure, if possible, in order to be strategically safer 
as regards England, and to secure better access to the ocean. 

"Special measures must be taken to keep the German Empire 
from suffering internally in any way owing to this enlargement of 
its frontier and addition to its territory. In order not to have condi- 
tions such as those in Alsace-Lorraine, the most important business 
undertakings and estates must be transferred from anti-German 
ownership to German hands, France taking over and compensating 
the former owners. Such portion of the population as is taken over 
by us must be allowed absolutely no influence in the Empire. 

"Furthermore, it is necessary to impose a mercilessly high war 
indemnity (of which more hereafter) upon France, and probably on 
her rather than on any other of our enemies, however terrible the 
financial losses she may have already suffered owing to her own folly 
and British self-seeking. We must also not forget that she has com- 
paratively large colonial possessions, and that, should circumstances 
arise, England could hold on to these with impunity if we do not help 
ourselves to them." 

(Confidential petition of the German Professors and other 
Intellectuals, June 20, 1915. (G., p. 134.) 



"If the fortress of Longwy with the numerous blast furnaces of 
the region were returned to the French, then when a new war broke 
out, the German and Luxemburg furnaces (list of which is given) 
would be paralyzed in short order by a few long-range guns. Thus 
about 20 per cent, of the production of crude iron and of German 
steel would be lost. * * * 

"Let us say that the high production of steel derived from the 
iron ore gives to German agriculture the only chance of obtaining 
the phosphoric acid needed when the importation of the phosphates 
is blockaded. 

"The security of the German Empire, in a future war, requires, 
therefore, imperatively the ownership of all mines of iron ore, includ- 
ing the fortresses of Longwy and of Verdun, which are necessary to 
defend the region." 

(Petition of the Six Industrial Associations to the Imperial 
Chancellor.) (G., pp. 129-130.) 



"In the same way, in the case of a new victory over France, 
strategical reasons alone would make it certain that some territories 
would be annexed; and in the same way it is safe to predict that 
France would be compelled to compensate and to receive within her 



42 



own frontiers all those inhabitants of these territories who, for his- 
torical and ancestral reasons, do not wish to become German citizens. 
The future of the nations is not bound up with the domination and 
exploitation of neighboring countries, but with the occupation and 
settlement of as large and self-contained areas as possible, just as 
that has been their life principle in the past." 

(Der Reichsbote, Jan. 7, 1913.) (N., p. 26.) 



"It (the prospect of war) is entertained without emotion. The 
profits are calculated — the annihilation of France, an indemnity of 
war amounting to twenty-five milliards because it is remembered 
that the last time you paid up too easily — and then we shall rub our 
hands. You smile! That is because you don't know what Germany 
is today. It is a nation of shopkeepers; love of gain is its ruling 
passion; to earn money, to get rich quickly, is its one ideal." 

(Alfred Kerr, in an interview with Georges Bourdon. The 
German Enigma, 1914, p. 166. Kerr is a German, editor of the 
review. Pan. Bourdon, a Frenchman, visited Germany in 1912, 
to learn from prominent Germans their views of Franco-Ger- 
man relations.) 



"The German people is of one mind with its princes and its Em- 
peror in the feeling that in its powerful development it must set up 
a new boundary post and create a great fleet which will correspond 
to its needs. 

"Just as Emperor William the Great created the weapon by whose 
help we became again black, white and red, so the German people are 
now lending their efforts to forging the weapon through which, God 
willing, and in all eternity, it will remain black, white and red." 

(The Kaiser's speech, Berlin, Feb. 13, 1900. Christian Gauss, 
p. 158. The Kaiser often refers to his grandfather, William I., 
as "The Great." The weapon alluded to here is the increase 
in the size of the army which Bismarck, in defiance of the 
constitution and in spite of an adverse majority in the Diet, 
succeeded in maintaining in 1862-1866.) 



Some of the rules laid down in the German War Book : 

"On account of the destruction of the bridge of F- 



order: The district shall pay a special contribution of 10,000,- 
000 francs by way of amends. This is brought to the notice 
of the public who are informed that the method of assessment 
will be announced later and that the payment of the said sum 

will be enforced with the utmost severity. The village of F 

will be destroyed immediately by fire, with the exception of 
certain buildings occupied for the use of the troops." 

43 



These forms have been of great use to the German commanders 
in Belgium and Northern France. The closeness with which they 
have been followed in these conquered lands, during the present war, 
may be seen by reading the following proclamations and the other 
proclamations which are printed elsewhere. 

"The City of Brussels, exclusive of its suburbs, has been 
punished by an additional fine of 5,000,000 francs on account of 
the attack made upon a German soldier bj' Ryckere, one of its 
police officials. 

"The Governor of Brussels, 

BARON VON LUETTWITZ. 

The German officers were provided with the forms to be used in 
terrorizing the conquered people. The common soldiers were pro- 
vided with phrase books which would enable them to impose their 
will upon the terrified people. Minister Brand Whitlock in his re- 
port to the State Department on September 12, 1917, writes: 

"The German soldiers were provided with phrase books 
giving alternate translations in German and French of such 
sentences as: 

" 'Hands up.' (It is the very first sentence in the book.) 
" 'Carry out all the furniture. 
" 'I am thirsty. Bring me some beer, gin, rum. 
" 'You have to supply a barrel of wine and a keg of beer. 
" 'If you lie to me, I will have you shot immediately. 
" 'Lead me to the wealthiest inhabitants of this village. I 
have orders to requisition several barrels of wine. 

"Show us the way to . If you lead us astray, you will 

be shot.' " 



44 



GERMAN ATROCITIES. 



PAN-GERMANISM AND AMERICA. 

"The most dangerous foe of Germany in this generation will 
prove to be the United States." 

Dr. Otto Hotsch in Alldeutsche Blatter, Aug. 23, 1902. 
Hotsch is really speaking here of commercial war, but to him 
political war was a natural sequence of commercial. Hotsch 
is professor of history at the royal academy in Posen and at 
the war academy in Berlin. 



"Operations against the United States of North America must 
be entirely different. With that country, in particular, political 
friction, manifest in commercial aims, has not been lacking in recent 
years, and has until now been removed chiefly through ac quiescence 
on our part. However, as this submission has its limit, the question 
arises as to what means we can develop to carry out our purpose 
with force in order to combat the encroachments of the United 
States upon our interests. Our main factor is our fleet. * * * it 
is evident, then, that a naval war against the United States can not 
be carried on with success without at the same time inaugurating 
action on land. * * * It is almost a certainty, however, that a 
victorious assault on the Atlantic coast, tying up the importing and 
exporting business of the whole country, would bring about such 
an annoying situation that the Government would be willing to treat 
for peace. 

"If the German invading force were equipped and ready for trans- 
porting the moment the battle fleet is despatched, under average con- 
ditions, these corps can begin operations on American soil within at 
least four week.*. .*. .* The United States at this time (1901) is not 
in a position to oppose our troops with an army of equal rank. * * * 

"The fact that one or two of her provinces are occupied by the 
invaders would not alone move the Americans to sue for peace. To 
accomplish this end the invaders would have to inflict real material 
damage by injuring the whole country through the successful seizure 
of manj^ of the Atlantic seaports in which the threads of the entire 
wealth of the Nation meet. It should be so managed that a line of 
land operations would be in close junction v^dth the fleet, through 
which we would be in a position to seize in a short time many of these 
important and rich cities, to interrupt their means of supply, disor- 
ganize all governmental affairs, assume control of all useful buildings, 
confiscate all war and transport supplies, and lastly, to impose heavy 
indemnities. * * * 

"As a matter of fact, Germany is the only great power which is in 
a position to conquer the United States." 

Freiherr von Edelsheim, Operations upon the Sea, trans. 1914, 
pp. 86-92. Edelsheim was a second lieutenant in the service 
of the German General Staff in 1901, when he wrote these words 
They are not ofificial, but the opinions of a military man and a 
nobleman. 

45 



"The Germanization of America has gone ahead too far to be inter- 
rupted. Whoever talks of the danger of the Americanization of the 
Germans now here is not well informed or cherishes a false conception 
of our relations. * * * In a hundred years the American people 
will be conquered by the victorious German spirit, so that it will 
present an enormous German Empire. Whoever does not believe this 
lacks confidence in the strength of the German spirit. 

Letter of a New York German, Robert Thiem, to the All- 
deutsche Blatter, Sept. 20. 1902. The Alldeutsche Blatter 
thinks the author rather optimistic. Germans differ as to the 
outcome in America, says this Pan-German organ. Some are 
very pessimistic. The Alldeutsche Blatter thinks that the great 
hope is for Germans in America to retain their language. 



It is therefore the duty of everyone who loves languages to see 
that the future language spoken in America shall be German. It is of 

the highest importance to keep up the German language in America, 
to establish German universities, improve the schools, introduce Ger- 
man newspapers, and to see that at American universities there are 
German professors of the very highest ability who will make their in- 
fluence felt unmistakably on thought, science, art, and literature. If 
Germans bear this in mind, and help accordingly, the goal with even- 
tually be reached. At the present moment the center of German intel- 
lectual activity is in Germany; in the remote future it will be in 
America. The Germans there are the pioneers of a greater German 
culture, which we may regard as ours in the future. He advises the 
Germans to compose themselves into an aristocracy of talent, which 
is the most effective way nowadays to obtain political power. Ger- 
mans only need to grasp the situation and the future is theirs. Let 
them show that they mean to maintain Deutschtum, and then emigra- 
tion may be directed to America with impunity. 

Hiibbe-Schleiden, in the Alldeutsche Bl'atter. February 21. 1903. 
[Summarized in P. G. D., pp. 319-321.] Wilhelm Hiibbe-Schlei- 
den is a traveler, student, and writer on German colonization. 



"The more Germany is condemned to an attitude of passive resist- 
ance toward the United States the more emphatically must she defend 
her interests in Central and South America, where she to-day occu- 
pies an authoritative position. Now, in matters of equity and respect 
for the law the Romanic peoples in America can not be judged accord- 
ing to European standards, and in certain circumstances Germany will 
be constrained all the more to employ coercive political measures in 
proportion as the amount of German capital invested (in State loans, 
railways, plantations) in those parts increases. For this purpose tve need 
a fleet capable not only of coping with the miserable forces of South 
American States, but powerful enough, if the need should arise, to cause 
American to think twice before making any attempt to apply an economic 
Monroe Doctrine in South America." 

"Not only North America, but the whole of America must become 
a bulwark of Germanic Kiiltur, perhaps the strongest fortress of the 
Germanic races." 

46 



SECTION XVT. 

"It is therefore necessary to convince ourselves, and to convince 
the generation w^e have to educate that the time for rest has not 
arrived ; that the prediction of a supreme struggle, in which the existence 
and pozver of Germany zmll be at stake, is by no means a vain chimera 
emanating from the imaginations of a few ambitious madmen ; that this 
supreme struggle zvill burst forth one day terrible and mometttous as all 
struggles between nations that serve as a prelude to great political revo- 
lutions." 

From a speech by General von der Goltz, quoted by Emil 
Reich, Germany's Swelled Head (1907), 1914, pp. 52-53.. 



"We are all familiar with the speech that General von der Goltz 
made recently at the meeting of Young Germany, in which he said, 
among other things, 'Oh, if we could only have another war soon.' 
Such are the ideas put forth by the professional soldiers." 

Deputy Scheidemann, in the Reichstag, April 8, 1913. 



"What our people are longing for is a great national purpose. Our 
present policy seems to be one of mere self-preservation. But a progres- 
sive nation, advancing by such strides as we do, needs more territory for 
the employment of its energies, and if that is not to be had by peaceful 
means there is nothing left but war. It is the task of the Defense Asso- 
ciation ('Wehrverein') to arouse the people to a recognition of this fact." 

From a speech by General von Wrochem, in the local branch of 
the Defense Association (Wehrverein), as reported in the Danzinger 
Neueste Nachrichten, March 6, 1913. [N. p. 84.] 



"War is represented not merely as a possibility that might arise, 
but as a necessity that must come about, and the sooner the better. 

In the opinion of these instigators, the German Nation needs a war; a 
long-continued peace seems regrettable to them just because it is a 
peace, no matter whether there is any reason for war or not, and 
therefore, in case of need, one must simply strive to bring it 
about. * * * 

"From this dogma [that war must come] it is only a step to the 
next chauvinistic principle, so dear to the heart of our soldier poli- 
ticians who are languishing for war — the fundamental principle of the 
aggressive or preventive war. If it be true that war is to come, then 
let it come at the moment which is most favorable to ourselves. In 
other words do not wait until there is a reason for war, but strike 
when it is most convenient. And above all as soon as possible.* * * 

"There is no real issue to-day any^vhere between Germany and the 
powers of the Triple Entente which could be said to make war un- 
avoidable." 

Otfried Nippold, Der deutsche Chauvinismus, 1913, p. 113, et seq. 

47 



"THE DAY" DAWNS. 

"The fateful day draws near. * * * ^^d even if the twilight 
of the gods be upon us, let it come in furious battle rather than in 
lingering sickliness." 

Count du Moulin-Eckart, speech at Stuttgart meeting of the 
Pan-German League, Alldeutsche Blatter, April 25, 1914. 



"If we do not decide for war, that war in which we shall have to 
engage at the latest in two or three years will be begun in far less 
propitious circumstances. At this moment the initiative rests with us. 
Russia is not ready, moral factors and right are on our side, as well as 
might. Since we shall have to accept the contest some day, let us 
provoke it at once. Our prestige, our position as a great power, our 
honor are in question, and yet more, for it would seem that our very 
existence is concerned." 

Militarische Rundschau, July, 1914. Quoted in the Annual 
Register, 1914, p. 305. 



"Mere force or calculation gives mastery; for leadership more is 
required — superior culture, superior morality, respect for distinctive 
national characteristics, an intelligence capable of comprehending and 
assimilating foreign elements. These qualities insure to the people 
which possesses them all the world power of the future, and we Ger- 
mans are that people." 

Dr. Albert Gottlieb, Der deutsche Staatsgendanke, p. 389; in 
the Grenzboten, No. 52, Dec, 1914. [G., p. 194.] 



"We know it I The German eagle will spread his wings in victory and 
soar to prouder heights than ever. And we will hold for all time the 
lands which have been fertilized by German blood. Our fiery love for our 
fatherland makes us strong enough to bring it the greatest sacrifices. But 
may zve also hold fast what we have seized and zvin besides ivhatever we 
require." 

Deputy Basserman at the farewell celebration of the National 
Liberal representation in the Reichstag, December, 1914. [G., p. 71.] 



"Concerning the conditions we may not speak, but this much must 
be given utterance: That in the heart of every German there lives the 
hope that the land conquered with so much German blood shall not 
be surrendered. We must on to the the British Channel," etc. 

Speech Apr. 18, 1915, by Vice President of the Reichstag 
Paasche. [G., p. 72.] After this speech some of the Social-Dem- 
ocratic organs expressed a doubt whether Paasche's views were 
those of his party, the National Liberal. The official organ, 
the Nationalliberale Correspondenz, replied that they were. 

48 



"First of all, our enemy is in the west. * * * Ninety per cent 
of Germans burn with the feeling that we must reckon, once for all, 
with England and France. Secondly, terms of peace will be decided 
by the military situation on the day when peace is declared. Thirdly, 
our enemy must be either annihilated or conciliated, and * * * a 
policy of conciliation in the west is impossible. We have to fight our 
way through to the ocean, and whatever stands in our way must be 
destroyed. Fourthly, zve maintain the old Balkan principle, 'the conqueror 
keeps what he has.' * * * There is nothing more to be said about 
Belgium. We need an opening to the channel and we must have Antwerp. 
He who wants Belgium may come and take it from us. Fifthly, we must 
strengthen the German Empire ; and that means strengthening the Empire's 
central power, which means Prussia." 

Rheinisch-Westfiilische Zeitung, Oct. 27, 1916. This paper is 
the organ of the Krupp interests. Quoted in Quarterly Review 
Jan.. 1917. 



"Vou have the upper hand. It is not your enemies but you who are 
making victorious progress at the front ; it is your enemies who are men- 
aced by famine and not you. Your home army is rising to put at your 
disposal men, arms, munitions, foodstuffs, all in large quantities. Demand, 
then, Germany, instead of giving way; and if your enemies will not accept 
your demands then continue the struggle, remembering that you have to 
execute a judgment of God on these pirates, liars, and robbers. We 
Germans fear God, and nothing else in the world ; and it will always be so, 
Demand, Germany ! and you will conquer." 

Der Tag, quoted in the Manchester Guardian, Jan. 4, 1917. 



"Anybody who knows the present state of things in Belgian indus- 
try will agree with me that it must take at least some years — assum- 
ing that Belgium is independent at all — before Belgium can even think 
of competing with us in the world market. And anybody who has 
traveled, as I have done, through the occupied districts of France will 
agree with me that so much damage has been done to industrial prop- 
erty that no one need be a prophet in order to say that it will take 
more than ten years before we need think of France as a competitor 
or of the reestablishment of French industry." 

Deputy Beumer in the Prussian Diet, week of Feb. 20-27. 
London Times, Feb. 27, 1917. Than the above passage there is 
nothing more cynical and cruel in this compilation. For the 
utter desolation which the Germans have wrought in the occu- 
pied territory there is here revealed a deeper motive. 



"As a result of the experiences of this war the enemy countries 
will so protect themselves that their economically valuable posses- 
sions close to the frontier can not again be overrun so easily as was 
the case this time. We can not give up Longwy and Briey, because 
in a new war it will be impossible for us again to be in Longwy in 
24 hours and in Liege in four days." 

Deputy Fuhrmann in the Prussian Diet, week of Feb. 20-27, 
1917. London Times, Feb. 27. 

49 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 



GERMANY PLEDGED TO HAGUE REGULATIONS. 

For many years leaders in every civilized nation have been trying 
to make warfare less brutal. The great landmarks in this movement 
are the Geneva and Hague Conventions. The former made rules as 
to the care of the sick and wounded and established the Red Cross. 
At the first meeting at Geneva in 1864, it was agreed, and until the 
present war it has been taken for granted, that the wounded, and the 
docotrs and nurses who cared for them, would be safe from all attacks 
by the enemy. The Hague Conventions, drawn up in 1899 and 1907, 
made additional rules to soften the usages of war and especially to 
protect noncombatants and conquered lands. Germany took a prom- 
inent part in these meetings and with the other nations solemly 
pledged her faith to keep all the rules except one article in the Hague 
Regulations. This was article 44 which forbade the conqueror to 
force any of the conquered to give information. All the other rules 
and regulations she accepted in the most binding manner. 

GERMAN POLICY OF FRIGHTFULNESS. 

But Germany's military leaders had no intention of keeping these 
solemn promises. They had been trained along diflferent lines. Their 
leading generals for many years had been urging a policy of fright- 
fulness. In the middle of the nineteenth century von Clausewitz was 
looked upon as the greatest military authority, and the methods which 
he advocated were used by the Prussian army in its successful wars 
of 1866-1871. Consequently, because these wars had been successful, 
the wisdom of von Clausewitz's methods seemed to the Prussian army 
to be fully proven. 

Now, the essence of Von Clausewitz's teachings was that suc- 
cessful war involves the ruthless application of force. In the open- 
ing chapter of his master work, Vom Kriege (on war) he says: 

"Violence arms itself with the inventions of art and science. * * * 
Self-imposed restrictions, almost imperceptible and hardly worth men- 
tioning, termed usages of international law, accompany it without 
essentially impairing its power * * * Now, philanthropic souls 
might easily imagine that there is a skilful method of disarming or 
subduing an enemy without causing too much bloodshed, and that 
this is the true tendency of the art of war. However plausible this 
may appear, still it is an error which must be destroyed; for in such 
dangerous things as war, the errors which proceeded from a spirit 
of 'good-naturedness' are precisely the worst. As the use of physical 
force to the utmost extent by no means excludes the co-operation of 
the intelligence, it follows that he who uses force ruthlessly, without 
regard to bloodshed, must obtain a superiority, if his enemy does not 
so use it." 

In 1877-78, in the course of a series of articles upon "Military 
Necessity and Humanity," Gen. von Hartmann wrote in the same 
spirit as von Clausewitz: 

50 



FRIGHTFULNESS ADVOCATED BY GERMAN GENERALS. 

"The enemy state must not be spared the want and wretchedness 
of war; these are particularly useful in shattering its energy and sub- 
duing its will. Individual persons may be harshly dealt with when an 
example is made of them, intended to serve as a warning. * * * 
Whenever a national war breaks out, terrorism becomes a necessary 
military principle. It is a gratuitous illusion to suppose that modern 
war does not demand far more brutality, far more violence, and an 
action far more general than was formerly the case. When inter- 
national war has burst upon us, terrorism becomes a principle made 
necessary by military considerations." 

In 1881 Von Moltke, who had been commander in chief of the 
Prussian army in the Franco-Prussian War, declared: 

"Perpetual peace is a dream and not even a beautiful dream. War 
is an element in the order of the world established by God. By it 
the most noble virtues of man are developed, courage and renuncia- 
tion, fidelity to duty and the spirit of sacrifice — the soldier gives his 
life. Without war, the world would degenerate and lose itself in m.a- 
terialism; the soldier who endures suflFering, privation, and fatigue, 
who courts dangers, can not take only 'in proportion to the resources 
of the country.' He must take all that is necessary to his existence. 
One has no right to demand of him anything superhuman. The great 
good in war is that it should be ended quickly. In view of this, every 
means, except those which are positively condemnable, must be per- 
mitted. I cannot in any way, agree with the Declaration of St. 
Petersburg when it pretends that 'the weakening of the military forces 
of the enemy constitutes the only legitimate method of procedure in 
war.' No! One must attack all the resources of the enemy govern- 
ment, his finances, his railroads, his stock of provisions and even his 
prestige. * * *" 



KAISER'S "HUN" SPEECH IN 1900. 

Many other examples might be cited from the writings of German 
generals. The very best illustration of this attitude, however, is to 
be found in the Emperor's various speeches, and especially in his 
speech to his soldiers on the eve of their departure for China in 1900. 
On July 27, the Kaiser went to Bremerhaven to bid farewell to the 
German troops. As they were drawn up, ready to embark for China, 
he addresed to them a last ofificial message from the Fatherland. The 
local newspaper reported his speech in full. In it appeared this advice 
and admonition from the Emperor, the commander in chief of the 
army, the head of all Germany. 

"No mercy will be shown! No prisoners will be taken! As the 
Huns, under King Atilla, made a name for themselves, which is still 
mighty in traditions and legends today, may the name of Germany 
be so fixed in China by your deeds that no Chinese shall ever again 
dare even to look at a German askanse. * * * Open the way for 
Kultur once for all." 

"As son as you come to blows with the enemy he will be beaten." 

51 



"It is the soldier and the army, not parliamentary majorities and 
votes, that have welded the German Empire together. My confidence 
rests upon the army." (The German Emperor, in connection with 
laying the corner stone of a church in Berlin. — G. W. M., p. 93.) 



"I am going to pronounce a blessing on this war, the blessing 
which is on all lips, for we Germans, no matter in what part of the 
world we are, all bless, bless, and bless again this world war." (Her- 
man Bahr, Kriegssegen, 1915, p. 19. Bahr is a magazine writer, and 
stage manager of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.) 

German Government Reversion to Barbarism, 

A half-century later, after more than 50 years of progress, the 
German Government has gone back to the methods used by "bar- 
barous armies" and "uncivilized people." It has deliberately adopted 
the policy of deporting men and women, boys and girls, and of forc- 
ing them to work for their captors; it has even compelled them to 
make arms and munitions for use against heir allies and their own 
flesh and blood. 

No other act of the German Government has aroused such horror 
and detestation throughout the civilized world. Thousands of help- 
less men and women, boj^s and girls, have been enslaved. Families 
have been broken up. Girls have been carried oflF to work — or worse 
— in a strange land, and their relatives have not known where they 
have been taken, or what their fate has been. 

This system of forced labor and deportation embraced the whole 
of Belgium, Poland, and the occupied lands of France. 



Extract from another letter to a brother: 

"Schleswig, 25, 8, 14, (Aug. 25. 1914). 
"Dear Brother, * * * You will shortly go to Brussels 
with your regiment, as you know. Take care to protect yourself 
against these ck'Hians, especially in the villages. Do not let 
anyone of them come near vou. Fire zcithout pity on everyone 
of them zcho comes too near. They are very clever, cunning 
fellows, these Belgians; even the women and children are 
armed and fire their guns. Never go inside a house, especially 
alone. If you take anything to drink make the inhabitants 
drink first, and keep at a distance from them. The newspapers 
relate numerous cases in zchich thev have fired on our soldiers 
whilst they were drinking. You soldiers must spread around 
so much fear of yourselves that no civilian will venture to come 
near you. Remain always in the company of others. / hope 
that vou have read the newspapers and that you know hozv to 
behave. .Above all. have no cotnpassion for these cut-throats. 
Make for them zi'ithout pity with the butt-end of your rifle and 
the bayonet. * * * 

"Your brother, 

"WILLI." 

52 



The System of Frightfulness. 

The quotations and proclamations printed above show clearly the 
attitude of mind of the German military authorities. The policy of 
frightfulness had been exalted into a system with every minute detail 
worked out in advance. The Gerntwi War Book with its "cold-blood- 
ed doctrines of the nature of war and of the means which may be 
employed in prosecuting war," did its work in training the German 
military officials. Of this book it has been well said: "It is the first 
time in the history of mankind that a creed so revolting has been 
deliberately formulated by a great civilized state." The generals gave 
their sanction to this policy of frightfulness. Gen. von Bornhardi was 
quoted in an interview in the Ncuc Frie Presse of Vienna, as follows : 

"One cannot make war in a sentimental fashion. The more 
pitiless the conduct of the war, the more humane it is in reality, 
for it will run its course all the sooner. The war which of all 
wars is and must be most humane is that which leads to peace 
with as little delay as possible." 



Statement by von Bissing. 

Speaking on August 29, 1914, at Munster, of the extreme measures 
which the Germans had felt obliged to take against the civil popula- 
tion of Belgium, Gen. von Bissing said: 

"The innocent must suffer with the guilty. * * * In the 
repression of infamy, human lives cannot be spared, and if 
isolated houses, flourishing villages, and even entire towns are 
annihilated, that is assuredly regrettable, but it must not excite 
ill-timed sentimentality. All this must not in our eyes weigh 
as much as the life of a single one of our brave soldiers — the 
rigorous accomplishment of duty is the emanation of a high 
Kulturc, and in that, the population of the enemy countries can 
learn a lesson from our army." 

Extract from a letter written by a German soldier to his brother. 
(This letter, now in the possession of the United States Government, 
was obtained for this pamphlet from Mr. J. C. Grew, formerly secre- 
tary to the United States Embassy at Berlin.) 

"November 4, 1914. 

"The battles are everywhere extremely tenacious and bloody 
The Englishmen we hate most and we want to get even with 
them for once. While one now and then sees French prisoners, 
one hardly ever beholds French black troops or Englishmen. 
These good people are not overlooked by our infantrymen; that 
sort of people is mowed down without mercy. The losses of 
the Englishmen must be enormous. There is a desire to wipe 
them out, root and all." 

53 



The third letter, from the Western front, shows the same horror 
of the system of which the writer was a witness. 

"To the 

"American Government, 
"Washington, U. S. A. 

"Englishmen who have surrendered are shot down in small 
groups. With the French one is more considerate. I ask 
whether men let themselves be taken prisoner in order to be 
disarmed and shot down afterwards? Is that chivalry in battle? 
It is no longer a secret among the people; one hears everywhere 
that few prisoners are taken; they are shot down in small 
groops. They say naively: 'We don't want any unnecessary 
mouths to feed. Where there is no one to enter complaint 
there is no judge.' Is there then no power in the world which 
can put an end to these murders and rescue the victims? Where 
is Christianity? Where is right? Might is right. 

"A SOLDIER AND MAN WHO IS NO BARBARIAN." 

Belgian Warning of Danger. 

Naturally the reports of the atrocities committed by the Germans 
and the Emperor's declaration that the war would henceforth assume 
a terrible character (grausamen charakter) caused grave anxiety 
among the Belgians. In order to avoid the danger of reprisals, the 
Belgian government, at the beginning of the invasion, had every Bel- 
gian newspaper publish each day the following notice on its first 
page, in large print: 

"TO CIVILIANS. 

"The Minister of the Interior advises civilians in case the 
enemy should show himself in their district: 

"Not to f^ght; 

"To utter no insulting or threatening words : 

"To remain within their houses and close the windows; so 
that it will be impossible to allege that there was any provoca- 
tion; 

"To evacuate any houses or isolated hamlet which the 
soldiers may occupy in order to defend themselves, so that it 
cannot be alleged that civilians have fired; 

"An act of violence committed by a single civilian would be 
a crime for which the law provides arrest and punishment. It 
is all the more reprehensible in that it might serve as a pretext 
for measures of oppression, resulting in bloodshed or pillage, 
or the massacre of the innocent population with the women and 
children." 

In the hope of arousing the sympathy and securing the aid of the 
neutral nations, the Belgian government appointed a committee to 
ascertain the facts about the German practices. The evidence collect- 
ed by the Belgian commissioners is detailed and explicit, and their 
reports give names, places, and dates. It is not possible, however, to 

54 



include in this book more than the following summary of the charges 
they make against the Germans: 

"1. That thousands of unoffending civilians, including women 
and children, were murdered by the Germans. 

"2. That women had been outraged. 

"3. That the custom of the German soldiers immediately on 
entering a town was to break into wineshops and the cellars 
of private houses and madden themselves with drink. 

"4. That German officers and soldiers looted on a gigantic 
and systematic scale, and, with the connivance of the German 
authorities, sent back a large part of the booty to Germany. 

"5. That the pillage had been accompanied by wanton de- 
struction and by bestial and sacrilegious practices. 

"6. That cities, towns, villages, and isolated buildings were 
destroyed. 

"7. That in the course of such destruction human beings were 
burnt alive. 

"'8. That there was a uniform practice of taking hostages 
and thereby rendering great numbers of admittedly innocent 
people responsible for the alleged wrongdoings of others. 

"9. That large numbers of civilian men and women had been 
virtually enslaved by the Germans, being forced against their 
will to work for the enemies of their country, or had been 
carried off like cattle into Germany, where all trace of them 
had been lost. 

"10. That cities, towns, and villages had been fined and their 
inhabitants maltreated because of the success gained by the 
Belgian over the German soldiers. 

"11. That public monuments and works of art had been 
wantonly destroyed by the invaders. 

"12. And that generally the regulations of the Hague Con- 
ference and the customs of civilized warfare had been ignored 
by the Germans, and that amongst other breaches of such reg- 
ulations and customs, the Germans had adopted a new and in- 
human practice of driving Belgian men, women, and children 
in front of them as a screen between them and the allied 
soldiers." 

The German authorities undertook to defend themselves against 
the terrible indictment in the report published by the Belgian 
government and appointed a German commission, which collected a 
huge mass of materials designed to show that ther acts of cruelty 
were merely acts of reprisal necessitated by the deeds of the Belgians. 

The German commission declared in its findings that the German 
soldiers had acted with humanity, restraint, and Christian forbearance. 
But the sworn statements of German soldiers, which the commission 
published, show the reverse to be true. 

55 



German White Book Reveals Atrocities. 

It has been well said that the publication of this German White 
Book was "an amazing official blunder." The neutral world, whose 
good opinion Germany sought, was not convinced by it that the Bel- 
ginas had committed the atrocities with which the Germans charged 
them. On the other hand, this White Book published by the German 
government, will be accepted by everyone as conclusive evidence of 
the massacres and other brutal deeds which were carried out as "re- 
prisals" by the orders of the German military authorities in Belgium. 
The names of the German officers who gave the terrible orders are 
published officially, and "frequently the very men themselves come 
forward and depose coldly and callously to acts which have degraded 
the German army and left a stain upon its banners that (future) gen- 
erations of chivalry will not eflface." 

Indeed, in the light of the admissions of the German White Book, 
it is not too much to say that the time has already come which was 
spoken of by President Wilson in his dispatch to President Poincare 
September 19, 1914, when he said (speaking for "a nation which 
abhors inhuman practices in the conduct of a war"): 

"The time will come when this great conflict is over and 
w^hen the truth can be impartially determined. When that 
time arrives those responsible for violations of the rules of 
civilized warfare, if such violations have occurred, and for 
false charges against their adversaries, must of course bear 
the burden of the judgment of the world." 



CHARACTER OF THE MATERIAL USED IN THIS BOOK 

German Sources. 

In these pages, the evidence is drawn mainly from German and 
American sources. The German sources include official proclamations 
and other official utterances, letters and diaries of German soldiers, 
and quotations from German newspapers. The diaries which are so 
frequently quoted form a unique source. The Rules for Field Service 
of the Germany Army advises each soldier to keep such a diary while 
on active service. Very many German soldiers who have been taken 
prisoner had kept such diaries, and these have been confiscated by 
the captors. Many have been published, frequently with facsimile 
reproductions to guarantee their authenticity. The best known col- 
lection was made by Bedier, whom Prof. Hollmann, of the Univer- 
sity of Berlin, properly described as "the distinguished Prof. Joseph 
Bedier of the College de France." Of Bedier's publication Prof. 
Nyrop, of the University of Copenhagen, says: 

"He has translated the diaries and commented upon them 
just as one does with all old historical documents, and, in order 
that everyone may be in a position to check up his work, he 
has also accompanied the account with facsimile copies of the 
documents he used. Here, accordingly, at the outset every 
proof of the evidence which he has employed is provided. No 
falsification is possible. The accounts are those of eyewitnesses, 

56 



and these eyewitnesses are Germans. They tell what they 
themselves or their comrades have done, and Bedier accom- 
panies their remarks with running comments which show 
that not only have common law and the Hague Conventions 
been violated, but sins have also been committed against the 
most elementary laws of humanity. Both the material and the 
presentation are unassailable. The details which are provided 
by the German soldiers in regard to their own violent acts 
are horror-striking." 



TREATMENT OF CIVILIANS. 
MASSACRES. 



Bismarck's Idea in 1871. 

"If in the territory which we occupy, we can not supply everything 
for our troops, from time to time we shall send a flying column into 
the localities which are recalcitrant. We shall shoot, hang, and burn. 
After that has happened a few times, the inhabitants will finally come 
to their senses." 

The frightfulness taught by the German leaders had held full 
sway in Belgium. This is best seen in the entries in the diaries of 
the individual German soldiers. 

Extracts From German War Diaries. 

"During the night of August 15-16 Engineer Gr gave 

the alarm in the town of Vise. Everyone was shot or taken pris- 
oner, and the houses were burnt. The prisoners were made to inarch 
and keep up with the troops." (From the diary of non-commissioned 
officer Reinhold Koehn of the Second Battalion of Engineers, Third 
Army Corps.) 



"A horrible bath of blood. The whole village burnt, the French 
thrown into the blazing houses, civilians with the rest." (From the 
diary of Private Hassemer, of the Eighth Army Corps.) 



"In the night of August 18-19 the village of Saint-Maurice was 
punished for having fired on German soldiers by being burnt to the 
ground by the German troops (two regiments, the 12th Landwehr and 
the 17th). The village was surrounded, men posted about a yard from 
one another, so that no one could get out. Then the Uhlans set fire 
to it, house by house. Neither man, woman, nor child could escape; 
only the greater part of the live stock was carried off, as that could 
be used. Anyone who ventured to come out was shot down. All the 
inhabitants left in the village were burnt with the houses." (From 
the diary of Private Karl Scheufele, of the Third Bavarian Regiment 
of Landwehr Infantry.) 

57 



"At 10 o'clock in the evening the first battalion of the 178th 
marched down the steep incline into the burning village to the north 
of Dinant. A terrific spectacle of ghastly beauty. At the entrance 
to the village lay about fifty dead civilians, shot for having fired upon 
our troops from ambush. In the course of the night many others 
were also shot, so that we counted over 200. Women and children, 
lamp in hand, were forced to look on at the horrible scene. We ate 
our rice later in the midst of the corpses, for we had had nothing 
since morning. When we searched the houses we found plenty of 
wine and spirit, but no eatables. Captain Hamann was drunk." (This 
last phrase in shorthand.) (From the diary of Private Philipp, of the 
One Hundred and Seventy-eighth Regiment of Infantry, Twelfth 
Army Corps.) 



"Aug. 6th crossed frontier. Inhabitants on border very good to 
us and give us many things. There is no difference noticeable. 

"Aug. 23rd, Sunday (between Birnal and Dinant, village of Dis- 
onge). At 11 o'clock the order comes to advance after the artillery 
has thoroughly prepared the ground ahead. The Pioneers and In- 
fantry Regiment 178 were marching in front of us. Near a small vil- 
lage the latter were fired on by the inhabitants. About 220 inhabitants 
were shot and the village was burnt — artillery is continuously shoot- 
ing — the village lies in a large ravine. Just now, 6 o'clock in the 
afternoon, the crossing of the Maas begins near Dinant * * * 
All villages, chateaux, and houses are burnt down during this night. 
It was a beautiful sight to see the fires all round us in the distance. 

"Aug. 24th. In every village one finds only heaps of ruins and 
many dead. (From the diary of Matbern, Fourth Company, Eleventh 
Jager Battalion, Marburg.) 



"A shell burst near the 11th Company, and wounded seven men, 
three very severely. At 5 o'clock we were ordered by the officer in 
command of the regiment to shoot all the male inhabitants of Nom- 
eny, because the population was foolishly attempting to stay the ad- 
vance of the German troops by force of arms. We broke into the 
houses, and seized all who resisted, in order to execute them accord- 
ing to martial law. The houses which had not been already destroyed 
by the French artillery and our own were set on fire by us, so that 
nearly the whole town was reduced to ashes. It is a terrible sight 
when helpless women and children, utterly destitute, are herded to- 
gether and driven into France." (From the diary of Private Fischer, 
Eighth Bavarian Regiment of Infantry, Thirty-third Reserve Divi- 
sion.) 

ff 

Other German soldiers, too, we are glad to see, show their 
horror at the foul deeds. 

58 



"The inhabitants have fled in the village. It was horrible. There 
was clotted blood on all the beards, and what faces one saw, ter- 
rible to behold! The dead, sixty in all, were at once buried Among 
them were many old women, some old men, and a half-delivered 
woman, awful to see; three children had clasped each other, and 
died thus. The altar and the vaults of the church are shattered. They 
had a telephone there to communicate with the enemy. This morn- 
ing, September 2, all the survivors were expelled, and I saw four 
little boys carrying a cradle, with a baby five or six months old in 
it, on two sticks. All this was terrible to see. Shot after shot! 
Thunderbolt after thunderbolt! Everything is given over to pillage; 
fowls and the rest all killed. I saw a mother, too, with her two 
children, one had a great wound on the head and had lost an eye.'' 
(From the diary of Lance-Corporal Paul Spielmann, of the Ersatz, 
First Brigade of Infantry of the Guard.) 



* * * In the night the inhabitants of Liege became mutinous. 
Forty persons were shot and 15 houses demolished, 10 soldiers shot. 
The sights here make you cry. 

"On the 23rd August, everything quiet. The inhabitants have so 
far given in. Seventy students were shot, 200 kept prisoners. In- 
habitants returning to Liege. 

"Aug. 24th. At noon with 36 men on sentry duty. Sentry duty 
is A 1, no post allocated to me. Our occupation, apart from bath- 
ing, is eating and drinking. We live like God in Belgium." (From 
the diary of Joh. van der Schoot, reservist of the Tenth Company, 
Thirty-ninth Reserve Infantry Regiment, Seventh Reserve Army 
Corps.) 



"August 17th. In the afternoon I had a look at the little chateau 
belonging to one of the King's secretaries (not at home). Our men 
had behaved like regular vandals. They had looted the cellar first, 
and then they had turned their attention to the bedrooms and thrown 
things about all over the place. They had even made fruitless efforts 
to smash the safe open. Everything was topsy-turvy — magnificent 
furniture, silk, and even china. That's what happens when the men 
are allowed to requisition for themselves. I am sure they must 
have taken away a heap of useless stuff simply for the pleasure of 
looting." 

"Aug. 23rd. * * * Our men came back and said that at the 
point where the valley joined the Meuse we could not get on any 
further as the villagers were shooting at us from every house. We 
shot the whole lot — 16 of them. They were drawn up in three 
ranks; the same shot did for three at a time. 

„ ^ ^ ^ -pj^g j^gj^ ^^^ already shown their brutal instincts; 
♦ * * 

59 



"The sight of the bodies of all the inhabitants who had been 
shot was indescribable. Every house in the whole village waa 
destroyed. We dragged the villagers one after another out of the 
most unlikely corners. The men were shot as well as the women 
and children who were in the convent, since shots had been fired from 
the convent windows; and we burnt it afterwards. 

"The inhabitants might have escaped the penalty by handing ovei 
the guilty and paying 15,000 francs. 

"The inhabitants fired on our men again. The division took dras- 
tic steps to stop the villages being burnt and the inhabitants being 
shot. The pretty little village of Giie d'Ossus, however, was appar- 
ently set on fire without cause. A cyclist fell off his machine and his 
rifle went off. He immediately said he had been shot at. All the in- 
habitants were burnt in the houses. I hope there will be no more 
such horrors. 

"At Leppe apparently 200 men were shot. There must have been 
some innocent men among them. In future we shall have to hold an 
inquiry as to their guilt instead of shooting them. 

"In the evening we marched to Maubert-Fontaine. Just as we were 
having our meal the alarm was sounded — everyone is very jumpy. 

"September 3rd. Still at Rethel, on guard over prisoners. * * * 
The houses are charming inside. The middle class in France has 
magnificent furniture. We found stylish pieces everywhere and beau- 
tiful silk, but in what a state * * * Good God! * * * Every 
bit of furniture broken, mirrors smashed. The Vandals themselves 
could not have done more damage. This place is a disgrace to our 
army. The inhabitants who fled could not have expected, of course, 
that all their goods would have been left intact after so many troops 
had passed. But the column commanders are responsible for the 
greater part of the damage, as they could have prevented the looting 
and destruction. The damage amounts to millions of marks; even 
the safes have been attacked. 

"In a solicitor's house, in which, as luck would have it, all was 
in excellent taste, including a collection of old lace and eastern 
works of art, everything was smashed to bits. 

"I could not resist taking a little memento myself here and there. 
* * * One house was particularly elegant, everything in the best 
taste. The hall was of light oak; I found a splendid raincoat under 
the staircase and a camera for Felix." (From the diary of an officer 
in the One Hundred Seventy-eighth Regiment, Twelfth Saxon Corps.) 

But this horror apparently was not shared by the German com- 
mander in chief, as is evident from the following: 

"ORDER. 
"To the People of Liege: 

"The population of Andenne, after making a display of peaceful 
intentions towards our troops, attacked them in the most treacherous 
manner. With my authorization, the general commanding these 

60 



troops has reduced the town to ashes and has had 110 persons shot. 

"I bring this fact to the knowledge of the people of Liege in 
order that they may know what fate to expect should they adopt a 
similar attitude. 

"Liege, 22nd August, 1914. 

"GENERAL VON BULOW." 



Slaughter of the Innocents at Rocher Bayard. 

"One scene surpasses in horror all others ; it is the fusillade of the 
Rocher Baynard near Dinant. It appears to have been ordered by Colonel 
Meister. This fusillade made many victims among the nearby parishes, 
especially those of des Rivages and Neffe. It caused the death of nearly 
90 persons, without distinction of age or sex. Among the victims were 
babies in arms, boys and girls, fathers and mothers of families, even 
old men. 

"It was there that 12 children under the age of 6 perished from the 
fire of the executioners, 6 of them as they lay in their mothers' arms. 

"The child Fievet, 3 weeks old. 

"Maurice Betemps, 11 months old. 

"Nellie Pollet, 11 months old. 

"Gilda Genon, 18 months old. 

"Gilda Marchot, 2 years old. 

"Clara Struvay, 2 years and 6 months. 

"The pile of bodies comprised also many children from 6 to 14 years. 
Eight large families have entirely disappeared. Four have but one sur- 
vivor. Those men that escaped death — and many of whom were riddled 
with bullets — were obliged to bury in a summary and hasty fashion their 
fathers, mothers, brothers, or sisters ; then after having been relieved of 
their money and being placed in chains they were sent to Cassel [Prussia].'' 

Mr. Hugh Gibson, the secretary of our legation in Belgium, visited 
Louvain during its systematic destruction by the Germans. In A Journal 
from our Legation in Belgium, New York, 1917, pages 164-165, he relates 
what the German officers told him : 

"It was a story of clearing out civilians from a large part of the town, 
a systematic routing out of men from cellars and garrets, wholesale shoot- 
ings, the generous use of machine guns, and the free application of the 
torch — the whole story enough to make one see red. And for our guidance 
it was impressed on us that this would make people respect Germany and 
think twice about resisting her." 

German pastors and professors far from the excitement of the firing 
have defended this policy of frightfulness, e. g. : 

61 



Pastor Defends Frightfulness. 

"We are not only compelled to accept the war that is forced upon us 
♦ * * but are even compelled to carry on this war with a cruelty, a 
ruthlessness, an employment of every imaginable device, unknown in any 
previous war." Pastor D. Baumgarten, in Deutsche Reden in schwerer 
Zeit, "German Speeches in Difficult Days." 



A PROCLAMATION BY VON BULOW, IN NAMUR, AUGUST, 1914. 

"1. The Belgian and French soldiers must be delivered as prisoners 
of war before 4 o'clock in front of the prison. Citizens who do not 
obey will be condemned to hard labor for life in Germany. 

"The rigorous inspection of houses will commence at 4 o'clock. Every 
soldier found will be immediately shot. 

"2. Arms, powder, and dynamite must be given up at 4 o'clock. 
Penalty, being shot. 

"Citizens who know of a store of the above must inform the burgo- 
master, under penalty of hard labor for life. 

Von Bulow Takes Hostages in Every Street. 

"3. Every street will be occupied by a German guard, who will take 
ten hostages from each street, whom they will keep under surveillance. 
If there is any rising in the street, the ten hostages will be shot. 

"4. Doors may not be locked, and at night after 8 o'clock there must 
be lights at three windows in every house. 

"5. It is forbidden to be in the street after 8 o'clock. The inhabitants 
of Namur must understand that there is no greater and more horrible 
crime than to compromise the existence of the town and the life of its 
citizens by risings against the German Army. 

"The Commander of the Town, 

"VON BULOW. 
Namur, 25th August, 1914. (Printed by Chantraine)." 

PROCLAMATION TO THE POPULATION OF RHEIMS. 

"In order to insure sufficiently the safety of our troops and the tran- 
quility of the population of Rheims, the persons mentioned have been 
seized as hostages by the Commander of the German Army. These host- 
ages will be shot if there is the least disorder. On the other hand, if 
the town remains perfectly calm and quiet these hostages and inhabitants 
will be placed under the protection of the German Army. 

"THE GENERAL COMMANDING. 
"Rheims, 12 September, 1914." 

Over Eighty Hostages in Rheims. 

Beneath this proclamation there were posted the names of 81 hostages 
and a statement that others had also been seized as hostages. The lives 
of all these men depended in reality upon the interpretation which the 
German military authorities might give to the elastic phrase, "the least 
disorder," in the proclamation. 

62 



Hugh Gibson, in A Journal from our Legation in Belgium, page 184, 
explained what was likely to happen : 

"Another thing is, that on entering a town, they hold the burgomaster, 
the procureur du roi, and other authorities as hostages to insure good 
behavior by the population. Of course, the hoodlum class would like 
nothing better than to see their natural enemies ; the defenders of law and 
order, ignominously shot, and they do not restrain themselves a bit on 
account of the hostages." 

STATEMENT FROM DIARY OF BOMBARDIER WETZEL. 

"Aug. 8th. First fight and set fire to several villages. 

"Aug. 9th. Returned to old quarters ; there we searched all the houses 
and shot the mayor and shot one man down from the chimney pot, and 
then we again set fire to the village. 

"On the 18th August Letalle (?) captured 10 men with three priests 
because they have shot down from the church tower. They were brought 
to the village of Ste. Marie. 

Hostages at Willekamm. 

Oct. 5th. We were in quarters in the evening at Willekamm. Lieut. 
Radfels was quartered in the mayor's house and there had two prisoners 
(tied together) on a short whip, and in case anything happened they were 
to be killed. 

Oct. 11th. We had no fight, but we caught about 20 men and shot 
them." (From the diary of Bombardier Wetzel, Second Mounted Battery 
First Kurhessian Field Artillery, Regiment No. 11.) 

The Germans also found it convenient on many occasions to secure 
civilians, both men and women, who could be forced to march or stand 
in front of the troops, so that the countrymen of the civilians would be 
compelled first to kill their own people if they resisted the Germans. 
This usage is illustrated in the following: 

LETTER OF LIEUT. EBERLEIN. 

Civilians Used as Screens. 

"October 7, 1914. 

"But we arrested three other civilians, and then I had a brilliant idea. 
We gave them chairs, and we then ordered them to go sit out in the 
middle of the street. On their part, pitiful entreaties; on ours, a few 
blows from the butt end of the rifle. Little by little one becomes terribly 
callous at this business. At last they were all seated outside in the street. 
I do not know what anguished prayers they may have said but I noticed 
that their hands were convulsively clasped the whole time. I pitied these 
fellows, but the method was immediately effective. 

"The flank fire from the houses quickly diminished, so that we were 
able to occupy the opposite house and thus to dominate the principal street. 
Every living being who showed himself in the street was shot. The ar- 
tillery on its side had done good work all this time, and when, toward 
7 o'clock in the evening, the brigade advanced to the assault to relieve us 
I was in a position to report that Saint Die had been cleared of the enemy. 

"llater on 1 learned that the regiment of reserve which entered Saint 
Die further to the north had tried the same experiment. The four civilians 

63 



whom they had compelled in the same way to sit out in the street were 
killed by French bullets. I myself saw them lying in the middle of the 
street near the hospital." 

"A. EBERLEIN, 

"First-Lieutenant." 

Letter published on the 7th October, 1914, in the "Vorabendblatt" of 
the MUnchner Neueste Nachrichten. 

Minister Whitlock, in his report of September 12, 1917, to the Secre- 
tary of State, gives an instance of this German practice of seeking pro- 
tection. 

"No Respect to the Cassock." 

"The Germans attacked Hougaerde on the 18th August; the Belgian 
troops were holding the Gette Bridge in the village. The Germans forced 
the parish priest of Autgaerden to walk in front of them as a shield. As 
they neared the barricade the Belgian soldiers fired and the priest was 
killed. After the retreat of the Belgians the Germans shot 4 men, burned 
50 houses, and looted 100." 

Hugh Gibson, in A Journal from our Legation in Belgium, page 155, 
gives another incident : 

"Two old priests have staggered into the legation more dead 

than alive after having been compelled to walk ahead of the German 
troops for miles as a sort of protecting screen. One of them is ill, and 
it is said that he may die as a result of what he has gone through." 

The Commander in Chief of the German army in Belgium posted a 
proclamation declaring: 

Villages Made Responsible. 

"The villages where acts of hostility shall be committed by the inhabi- 
tants against our troops zmll be burned. 

"For all destruction of roads, railways, bridges, etc., the villages in the 
neighborhood of the destruction will be held responsible. 

"The punishments announced above will be carried out severely and 

without mercy. The whole community will be held responsible. Hostages 
will be taken in large numbers. The heaviest war taxes will be levied." 

Cardinal Mercier attempted to persuade the German authorities to 
abandon their terrible plans, reminding them of their solemn promises in 
the past. 

Another "Scrap of Paper." 

"Malines, 19th October, 1916. 
"Mr. Governor General : 

"The day aftetr the surrender of Antwerp the frightened population 
asked itself what would become of the Belgians of age to bear arms or 
who would reach that age before the end of the occupation. The en- 
treaties of the fathers and mothers of families determined me to question 
the governor of Antwerp, Baron von Huene, who had the kindness to 
reassure me and to authorize me in his name to reassure the agonized 
parents. The rumor had spread at Antwerp, nevertheless, that at Liege, 
Namur, and Charleroi young men had been seized and taken by force to 

64 



Germany. I therefore begged Governor von Huene to be good enough to 
confirm to me in writing the guarantee which he had given to me orally, 
to the efifect that nothing similar would happen at Antwerp. He said to 
me immediately that the rumors concerning deportations were without 
basis, and unhesitatingly he sent me in writing, among other statements, the 
following: 'Young men have no reason to fear that they will be taken to 
Germany, either to be there enrolled in the army or employed for forced 
labor.' 

"This declaration, written and signed, was publicly transmitted to the 
clergy and to those of the Faith of the province of Antwerp, as Your 
Excellency can see from the document enclosed herewith, dated October 
16th, 1914, which was read in all the churches. 

"Upon the arrival of your predecessor, the late Baron von der Goltz, 
at Brussels I had the honor of presenting myself at his house and re- 
quested him to be good enough to ratify for the entire country, without 
time limit, the guarantees which General von Huene had given me for 
the province of Antwerp. The governor general retained this request in 
his possession in order to examine it at his leisure. The following day 
he was good enough to come in person to Malines to bring me his approval, 
and confirmed to me, in the presence of two aides-de-camp and of my 
private secretary, the promise that the liberty of Belgian citizens would 
be respected. 

"To doubt the authority of such undertakings would have been to 
reflect upon the persons who had made them, and I therefore took steps 
to allay, by all means of persuasion in my power, the anxieties which 
persisted in the interested families. 

"Notwithstanding all this, your Government now tears from their homes 
workmen reduced in spite of their efforts to a state of unemployment, 
separates them by force from their wives and children and deports them 
to enemy territory. Numerous workmen have already undergone this 
unhappy lot; more numerous are those who are threatened with the 
same acts of violence. 

Mercier's Moving Appeal. 

"In the name of the liberty of domicile and the liberty of work of Bel- 
gian citizens ; in the name of the inviolability of families ; in the name of 
moral interests which the measures of deportation would gravely com- 
promise; in the name of the word given by the Governor of the Province 
of Antwerp and by the Governor General, the immediate representative 
of the highest authority of the German Empire, I respectfully beg Your 
Excellency to be good enough to reinstate in their homes those who have 
already been deported. 

"Your Excellency will appreciate how painful for me would be the 
weight of the responsibility that I would have to bear as regards these 
families, if the confidence which they have given you through my agency 
and at my request were lamentably deceived. 

"I persist in believing that this will not be the case. 

"Accept, Mr. Governor General, the assurance of my very high con- 
sideration. 

"D. J. CARDINAL MERCIER, 

"Arch, of Malines." 

65 



The Commission Syndicale of Belgian workingmen also attempted to 
induce the German authorities to abandon their terrible plans. 

"Commission Syndicale of Belgium, 

"Brussels, 30th October, 1916. 
To the Governor General of Belgium. 

"Excellency: The measures which are being planned by your ad- 
ministration to force the unemployed to work for the invading power, the 
deportation of our unhappy comrades which has begun in the region of 
the etapes, move most profoundly the entire working class in Belgium. 

"The undersigned, members and representatives of the great central 
socialist and independent syndicates of Belgium, would consider that they 
had not fulfilled their duty did they not express to you the painful senti- 
ments which agitate the laborers and convey to you the echo of their 
touching compjaints. 

"They have seen the machinery taken from their factories, the most 
diverse kind of raw materials requisitioned, the accumulation of obstacles 
to prevent the resumption of regular work, the disappearance one by one 
of every public liberty of which they were proud. 

Workmen Recite Their Wrongs at German Hands. 

"For more than two years the laboring class more than any other has 
been forced to undergo the most bitter trials, experiencing misery and 
often hunger, while its children far away fight and die, and the parents 
of these children can never convey to them the affection with which their 
hearts are overflowing. 

"Our laboring class has endured everything with the utmost calm and 
the most impressive dignity, repressing its sufferings, its complaints and 
heavy trials, sacrificing everything to its ideal of liberty and independence. 
But the measures which have been announced will make the population 
drain the dregs (of the cup) of human sorrow; the proletariat, the poor 
upon whom unemployment has been forced, citizens of a modern state, 
are to be condemned to forced labor without having disobeyed any regu- 
lation or order. 

An Appeal for Decent Treatment. 

"In the name of the families of workmen among which the most pain- 
ful anxiety reigns at present, whose mothers, whose fiancees, and whose 
little children are destined to shed so many more tears, we beg Your Ex- 
cellency to prevent the accomplishment of this painful act, contrary to 
international law, contrary to the dignity of the working classes, contrary 
to everything which makes for worth and greatness in human nature. 

"We beg Your Excellency to pardon our emotion and we oflfer you the 
homage of our distinguished consideration. 

"(Appended are signatures of members of the National Committee and 
the Commission Syndicale.)" 

The Germans Have No Right to Talk About Unemployment of 

Belgians. 

You fear also that 'the assistance which they receive will at length 
weigh down Belgian economic life.' We can with difficulty believe that 
Belgians, as you say, have had the smallness of soul to grudge in that form 
the bitter piece of bread and the little soup which have formed the food 

66 



of so many working: families for so many months ; and what, after all, do 
the twelve million francs amount to that are distributed each month to 
from 500,000 to 600,000 unemployed, in comparison with the destruction, 
beyond reckoning, ot goods and lives which the horrors of a war in whicn 
it has not the slightest responsibility have cost and still cost our country? 
With the most unshakable faith in our destinies, we, the most nearly in- 
terested, know that in the near future Flanders and Wallonie will rise 
again, glorious, in history. 

All Belgians Understand the German Scheme. 

"Excellency, our heart and our reason refuse, then, to believe that it is 
for the good of our class and to avoid an additional calamity to our 
country, that thousands of workers are suddenly torn from their families 
and transported to Germany. Public sentiment has not been deceived and 
in reply to the grievous complaints of the victims, there echo the indignant 
protests of the entire population, as expressed by its representatives, its 
communal magistrates, and those persons who constitute the highest in- 
carnation of law in our country. 

"Furthermore, the arbitrary and brutal manner employed in the exe- 
cution of these sad measures has raised all kinds of doubts regarding the 
object in view; the need, about all, is to obtain workmen in Germany, 
for Germany's profit, and for the success of its arms. 

"While at Antwerp they did not take any young men from 17 to 31 
years who were under the regime of control, in the Borinage they call 
all the men from 17 to 50 years of age; in Walloon Brabant all men over 
17 years, without making any distinction between the employed and un- 
employed. Men of all professions and of all conditions have been taken 
— bakers, who have never ceased to work in our co-operatives of the 
Borinage, for example ; mechanics, who always had employment ; agricul- 
tural workmen, merchants * * * At Lessines, on the 6th instant, 2,100 
persons were taken away, all workmen up to 50 years of age. Several 
cases are cited where old men with five or six of their sons have been 
exiled thus by force. 

The Tears of the Mothers and the Children. 

"Distressing scenes occur everywhere. The unhappy ones gathered 
together in the public squares are rapidly divided into gangs. They had 
been directed to bring a small amount of baggage; they are taken at once 
to the railway station and loaded in cattle cars. They are not allowed to 
say good-by to their families. No opportunity is given to them to put their 
affairs in order, even the most pressing ones. They do not know where 
they are going, nor for what work, nor for how long. Taken away at the 
beginning of the winter, after two years of privations, having no further 
resources and no means to provide themselves with warm clothing or with 
other indispensable articles, what privations are they going to endure? 
How will they live there? In what state will they return? This mystery 
and this anxiety are the cause of the ceaseless tears of the mothers and 
little children. Distress and despair reign in the homes. 

"Listen, Excellency, to these tears and these sobs. Do not permit our 
past of liberty and independence to be ruined. Do not permit the dignity 
of our working classes, which has been acquired after so many centuries 
of effort, to be trodden under foot. 

67 



1 



I 



"They have not weakened the courage of the soldiers of honor by their 
tears. 

"They have bravely given to their country those whom they loved. 
* * * The blood of mothers is flowing on the battle-fields. 

"Those who are taken away today do not go to perform a glorious 
duty. They are slaves in chains who, in a dark exile, threatened by 
hunger, prison, death, will be called upon to perform the most odious 
work — service to the enemy against the fatherland. 

"The mothers cannot stand by while such an abomination is taking place 
without making their voices heard in protest. 

"They are not thinking of their own sufferings, their own moral 
torture, the abandonment and the misery in which they are to be placed 
with their children. 

"They address you in the name of the inalterable rights of honor and 
conscience. 

The Rights of Honor and Conscience. 

"It has been said that women are 'all powerful suppliants.' 

"We have felt authorized by this saying, Mr. Minister, to extend our 

hands to you and to address to your country a last appeal. 

"We trust that in reading these lines you will feel at each word the 

unhappy heartbeats of the Belgian women and will find in your broad and 

humane sympathy imperative reasons for intervention. 

"Only the united will of the neutral peoples energetically expressed can 
counterbalance that of the German authorities. 

"This assistance which the neutral nations can and, therefore, ought 
to lend us, will it be refused to the appressed Belgians? 

"Be good enough to accept, Mr. Minister, the homage of our most 
distinguished consideration." 

(Signed by a number of Belgian women and 24 societies.) 
The United States Government did not fail to respond to this touching 
appeal and to others of a similar nature. The American Embassy at 
Berlin promptly took up the burning question of the deportations with the 
Chancellor and other representatives of the German Government. 

The American Government was not content with informal recommenda- 
tions to the German Government, and on December 5, 1916, the American 
representative at Berlin laid this formal protest before the German chan- 
cellor: 

FORMAL PROTEST OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT. 

A Solemn Protest by United States. 

"The Government of the United States has learned with the greatest 
concern and regret of the policy of the German Government to deport 
from Belgium a portion of the civilian population with the result of 
forcing them to labor in Germany, and is constrained to protest in a 
friendly spirit but most solemnly against this action which is in contra- 
vention of all precedent and those humane principles of international prac- 
tice which have long been accepted and followed by civilized nations in 
their treatment of non-combatants in conquered territory. Furthermore, 
the Government of the United States is convinced that the effect of this 

69 



policy if pursued will in all probability be fatal to the Belgian relief work 
so humanely planned and so successfully carried out, a result which 
would be generally deplored and which, it is assumed, would seriously 
embarrass the German Government." 

FRANCE. 

German Practices Were the Same in All Occupied Regions. 

In France the German system of forced labor and deportations, with 
its attendant callousness, brutalities, and horrors, was the same as in 
Belgium. Inasmuch as the German system in action has been adequately 
illustrated in the foregoing pages on Belgium, it will suffice in this part 
simply to show the real identity of German practice in the two occupied 
regions. 

NOTICE DISTRIBUTED TO HOUSES IN LILLE. 

Inhabitants of Lille Given Ninety Minutes to Get Ready to Depart. 

"All the inhabitants of the house, with the exception of children under 
fourteen and their mothers, and also of old people, must prepare them- I 
selves for transportation in an hour and a half's time. 

"An officer will decide definitely what persons will be taken to the 
concentration camps. For this purpose all the inhabitants of the house j 
must assemble in front of it; in case of bad weather they may remain in 
the passage. The door of the house must remain open. All protests will 
be useless. No inmate of the house, even those who are not to be trans- 
ported, may leave the house before 8 a. m. (German time). 

"Each person will be permitted to take 30 kilograms of baggage; if 
anyone's baggage exceeds that weight, it will all be rejected without 
further consideration. Packages must be separately made up for each 
person and must bear an address legibly written and firmly affixed. This 
address must contain the surname and the Christian name and the number 
of the identity card. 

Must Carry Their Own Cooking Utensils. 

"It is absolutely necessary that each person should, in his own interest, 
provide himself with eating and drinking utensils, as well as with a 
woolen blanket, good shoes, and body linen. Everyone must carry his 
identity card on his person. Anyone attempting to evade transportation 
will be punished without mercy. 

"ETAPPEN-KOMMANDANTUR." 
Lille, April, 1916. 

PROTEST OF BISHOP CHAROST, OF LILLE, ADDDRESSED TO 
GENERAL VON GRAEVENITZ. 

"Monsieur le General : It is my duty to bring to your notice the fact 
that a very agitated state of mind exists among the population. 

"Numerous removals of women and girls, certain transfers of men 
and youth, and even of children, have been carried out in the districts of 
Tourcoing and Roubaix without judicial procedure or trial. 

70 



Appeals to the Humanity of the Commander. 

"You are a father ; you know that there is not in the order of human- 
ity a right more honorable or more holy than that of the family. For every 
Christian the inviolability of God, who created the family, attaches to it. 
The German oflficers who have been billeted for a long time in our homes 
know how deep in our hearts we of the North hold family affection and 
that it is the sweetest thing in life to us. Thus to dismember the family 
by tearing youths and girls from their homes is not war; it is for us tor- 
tures — unlimited moral torture. The violation of family rights is doubled 
by a violation of the sacred demands of morality. Morality is exposed to 
perils, the mere idea of which is revolting to every honest man, from the 

The Methods of Deportation a Danger to Morals. 

promiscuity which inevitably accompanies removals en tiiassc, involving 
mixture of the sexes, or, at all events, of persons of very unequal moral 
standing. Young girls of irreproachable life, who have never committed 
any worse offense than that of trying to pick up some bread or a few 
potatoes to feed a numerous family, and who have besides paid the 
light penalty for such trespass, have been carried off. Their mothers, 
who have watched so closely over them and had no other joy than that 
of keeping their daughters beside them, in the absence of father and sons 
fighting or killed at the front — these mothers are now alone. They 
bring to me their despair and their anguish. I am speaking of what I have 
seen and heard. I know that you have no part in these harsh measures. 
You are by nature inclined toward justice; that is why I venture to turn 
to you ; I beg you to be good enough to forward without delay to the 
German High Military Command this letter from a Bishop, whose deep 
grief they will easily imagine. We have suffered much for the last 
twenty months, but no stroke of fortune could be comparable to this; it 
would be as undeserved as it is cruel and would produce in all France an 

Hopes for Restoration of the Deported, 
indelible impression. I cannot believe that the blow will fall. I have 
faith in the human conscience and I preserve the hope that the young 
men and girls of respectable families will be restored to their homes in 
answer to the demand for their return and that sentiments of justice and 
honor will prevail over all lower considerations. 

"ALEXIS ARMAND, 

"Bishop." 

Sometimes a Kind-hearted Officer Could Not Carry Out the Brutal 

Orders. 

" 'Tears of despair on the part of parents and children so ruthlessly 
separated did not soften the hearts of the brutal Germans. Sometimes, 
however, a more kind-hearted officer yielded to too great a despair, and did 
not choose all the persons whom he should — by the terms of his instruc- 
tions — have separated. 

" 'These girls and lads were taken in street cars to factories, where 
they were numbered and labelled like cattle and grouped to form con- 
voys. In these factories they remained twelve, twenty-four, or thirty-six 
hours until a train was ready -to remove them. 

" 'The deportation began with the villages of Roncq, Halluin, etc., then 
Tourcoing and Roubaix. In towns the Germans proceeded by districts. 

71 



Numbers Deported. 

" 'In all about 30,000 persons are said to have been carried off up to 
the present. This monstrous operation has taken eight to ten days to 
accomplish. It is feared, unfortunately, that it may begin again soon. 
Departures took place in freight cars to the sound of the "Marseillaise." 

Young Men and Girls Lodged in "Disgraceful Promiscuity." 

" 'It is known from the young men and girls, since sent back to their 
families for reasons of health, that in the Department of the Ardennes 
the victims are lodged in a terrible manner, in disgraceful promiscuity ; 
they are compelled to work in the fields. It is unnecessary to say that 
the inhabitants of our towns are not trained to such work. The Germans 
pay them 1.50 m. But there are complaints of insufficient food. 

" 'They were very badly received in the Ardennes. The Germans had 
told the Ardennais that these were "volunteers" who were coming to work, 
and the Ardennais proceeded to receive them with many insults, which 
only ceased when the forcible deportation, of which they were the vic- 
tims, became known. 

" 'Feeling ran especially high in our towns. Never has so iniquitous a 
measure been carried out. The Germans have shown all the barbarity of 
slave drivers. 

" 'The families so scattered are in despair and the morale of the whole 
population is gravely affected. Boys of 14, schoolboys in knickerbockers, 
young girls of 15 and 16 have been carried off, and the despairing protests 
of their parents failed to touch the hearts of the German officers or rather 
executioners. 

" 'One last detail : The persons so deportetd are allowed to write 
home once a month ; that is to say, even less often than military prisoners.' 

"Such are the declarations which we have collected and which, with- 
out commentary, confirm in an even more striking way the facts which 
we took the liberty of laying before you. 

"We do not wish here to enter into the question of provisioning in the 
invaded districts ; others, better qualified than ourselves, give you, as we 
know, frequent information. It is enough for us to describe in a few 
words the situation from this aspect : 

"The provisioning is very difficult ; food, apart from that supplied by 
the Spanish-American Committee, is very scarce and terribly dear. * * * 
Peole are hungry and the provisioning is inadequate by at least a half ; our 
population is suffering constant privations and is growing noticeably 
weaker. The death rate, too, has increased considerably. 

People Rely on the Neutral Powers. 

"Sometimes inhabitants of the invaded territories speak with a note of 
discouragement, crying apparently. 'We are forsaken by everyone.' We, 
on the other hand, are hopeful. Monsieur le President, that the energetic 
intervention on the part of neutrals, which the French Government is sure 
to evoke, will soon bring to an end these measures which rouse the wrath 
of all to whom humanity is not an empty word. * * * 

"With all confidence in the sympathy of the Government we venture to 
address a new and pressing appeal to your generous kindness and far- 
reaching influence in the name of those who are suffering on behalf of the 
whole country." 

(Signed on behalf of various specified organizations by Toulemonde, 
Charles Droulers, Leon Hatine-Dazin, and Louis Lorthiois.) 
"Paris, \5th June, 1916, 3, rue Taitbout." 

72 



STRIKING EVENTS OF WAR ENDED BY HUNS' 

SURRENDER. 



History's Greatest Struggle Has Raged on Land and Sea and in Air 

Since July 28, 1914. 



Cost in Blood and Wealth Reaches Staggering Total. 



On June 28, 1914, the Archduke Ferdinand, Heir Apparent to the throne 
of Austria, and his morganatic wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, while on 
a visit to Sarajevo, Bosnia, were shot to death by Gavrio Prinzip, a Ser- 
bian student. 

The world showed passing interest ; dukes and princes, even kings had 
been slain before and nothing of importance had followed. There had been 
talk for forty years of a great world war that was to come sometime, but 
as civilization had advanced and engines of destruction had been devel- 
oped to a staggering degree of power, people looked upon war as an imos- 
sibility; certainly the assassination of an Archduke would not bring it 
about. 

It was playtime in Europe. Already the great summer crowds of Ameri- 
can visitors on pleasure bent were pouring in at every port. They read of 
the murder and turned their attention to other things. 

But in the chancelleries and Deartments of State, men wore an anxious 
look. It had been learned since that the mighty war machine and plans of 
the Hohenzollerns, after more than forty years of preparation, were ready 
for use, and only the pretext was sought to plunge the world into mourn- 
ing that one man might dominate it. 

France was believed to be a weakling ; Russia, honeycombed with graft 
and incompetence, was looked upon as a negligible quantity ; England was 
occupied with the suffrage and Irish questions, and would have no time or 
power to interfere, for Hohenzollern believed that Ireland and India would 
seize the opportunity to declare themselves independent. The United 
States was across the sea, peaceful without an army, without military 
experience. 

On July 5, according to the confession of the Baron Wangenheim, Ger- 
man Ambassador to Turkey, to Henry Morgenthau. the American Am- 
bassador to the Ottoman Empire, there was a secret meeting in Berlin 
and the decision was reached to use this assassination as a pretext for the 
long-planned war. 

But the intended victims must be lulled to slumber. The Kaiser went 
to Norway on a pleasure tour. He must be "surprised" when the blow 
was struck. 

Nearly a month passed. On July 23, humanity was surprised by the 
ultimatum delivered by the government of the aged Francis Joseph of 
Austria to little Serbia ; it imposed terms which no self-respecting nation 
could accept. They were uncalled for, insulting. The world cried out at 
the injustice of it all. Serbia, however, in the hope of preventing the 
carnage which now loomed as a terrible probability, accepted all the 
humiliating terms but one, and on this it asked further information. 
Austria answered with her cannon. 

July 28 was the fateful date. The Kaiser had hurried back to Berlin, 
and every capital in Europe knew the portent of things. All efforts at 
mediation had failed. Neither Germany nor Austria, bent on war, would 
listen to reason or discuss matters. 

73 



Europe has been drenched with blood; millions of lives have been 
snuffed out, property worth hundreds of billions of dollars, has been de- 
stroj-ed, fair lands have been laid waste, ancient cities and priceless treas- 
ures of art and literature have been converted into shapeless ruin, and 
misery that man has not known before has spread to every quarter of the 
globe. 

Today, his hopes blasted, every scheme gone awr}-, deserted by his 
dupes and allies, William Hohenzollern, deprived of throne and power, 
sees his once mighty empire a ruin in the hands of the Red Terror, and 
he is left alone to contemplate the terrible catastrophe he has brought 
about while the civilized world is singing Hosannas of Victory. 

August. 1914. was a month of declaration of war. On the first day 
Germany declared war on Russia ; on the third it declared war on France, 
and demanded of Belgium the right to march her troops through that 
neutral country to attack her neighbor on the west and south. But 
Belgium was true to her treaties and refused, whereupon the same day 
Germany declared war on Belgium. Then, to the disgust of Germany and 
Austria, Ital)-, the third nation of the Triple Alliance, declared her neu- 
trality, basing her action that the alliance was for defense, and not 
offense. 

England, a signatorj- to the treaty which guaranteed the neutrality 
of Belgium, demanded that Germany respect that treaty, but the Ger- 
man chancellor termed this sacred obligation a "scrap of paper," and re- 
fused. August 4. England, true to her promises, declared war on Ger- 
many. In anticipation her mighty High Seas Fleet had been mobilized and 
had sailed away. Germany's ports were blocked from the outset, and 
British men-of-war began scouring the seas for such of the Kaiser's 
warships as were not locked up at home. In a trice the German mer- 
chant marine sought shelter in neutral ports. 

August 5. Montenegro declared war on Austria, and the American 
Congress voted money and planned relief for the thousands of American 
tourists in Europe who were cut off and left stranded by the war. August 
6 Austria declared war on Russia. August 7 the German army occupied 
the city of Liege and the first British troops landed on French soil. The 
French took Altkirk. in Alsace. Two days later they took Muelhausen. 
and the same day Serbia declared war on Germany. August 11 German 
troops entered France by way of Luxemburg, and the day's declarations 
of war were of France on Austria and Montenegro on Germany. The 
next day England declared war on Austria. 

On the 15th, from the extreme east came Japan's ultimatum to Ger- 
many to give up her Chinese possession of Kiao-Chau. On the 20th 
the Belgian government abandoned Brussels. On the 25th the invaders 
destroyed Louvain. with its library and all its priceless, irreplaceable treas- 
ures of ancient volume and manuscript. The same day Austria declared 
war on Japan. The month found the Germans advanced as far as Amiens, 
in France, while Russia was pouring her armies into East Prussia and 
Galicia. 

By September 3 the German rush had reached such a menacing posi- 
tion that Paris was imperiled, and the French government removed to 
Bordeaux. But on the 7th the drive was checked and the Germans began 
to fall back, continuing to do so until much French territory- had been 
recovered, and Paris was saved from any menace. 

The submarine, destined to play such an important part in the war, 
showed its might on September 22 by sinking the British cruisers Aboukir. 

74 



Cressy and Bisque. Antwerp fell to the invaders October 9, Ghent Octo- 
ber 12 and Lille October 13. On that day Prinzip, whose shot was used as 
the excuse for the war, was placed on trial at Sarajevo. October 29 he 
was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and four of his associates were con- 
demned to the gallows. On the 30th Russia declared war on Turkey. 

With the war in full swing, incident followed incident without cessa- 
tion. The more important events in chronological order follow : 

1914. 

November 1, British squadron sunk by German ships off Chile. 

November 5, Great Britain declares war on Turkey and annexed 
Cyprus. 

November 7, Japanese capture Kiao-Chau. 

November 9, Germans surrender Tsingtau to Japanese. 

November 18, Turks fire on U. S. S. Tennessee in Smyrna harbor. 

November 19, American government demands explanation from Turkey. 
November 27, Secretary Bryan announces that the Tennessee incident is 
closed. 

December 2, Austrians capture Belgrade, Serbia's capital. 

December 7, Serbians destroy Austria's army of invasion. 

December 8, British fleet destroys German fleet, consisting of the 
cruisers Leipzig, Scharnhorst, Gniesenau and Nuernberg, off the Falkland 
Islands. 

December 14, Serbians retake Belgrade. 

December 16, Germans shell British coast towns of Scarborough, Har- 
tlepool and Whitby, killing 93 civilians. 

December 27, United States protests against British stoppage of Ameri- 
can trade. 

1915. 

January 2, the Russians started the new year by invading Hungary at 
four points. 

January 6, Russians defeat Turks at Sarikamysh, destroying an entire 
army corps. 

January 25, British ships sink German cruiser Bluecher in the North 
Sea and win a battle against Boer rebels at Uppington, Bechuanaland, 
South Africa. 

February 2, Great Britain makes food contraband. 

February 3, Anglo-French fleet destroys four Turkish forts at the 
Dardanelles. 

February 4, Boer rebels surrender to British, who also rout the Turks 
north of Suez. 

February 5, Germany hurls a mighty force against Russia at Borijnow, 
and is defeated. British smash Turks at Suez. 

February 11, the United States warns both Great Britain and Ger- 
many not to abuse the American flag or attack American ships. 

February 16, American protests proposed German blockade of British 
Isles. 

February 18, Germany rejects America's protest. 

February 21, American steamship Evelyn sunk by a mine. 

February 23, American ship Carib sunk by a mine in the North Sea. 

February 27, General Botha leads a British invasion of German West 
Africa. 

March 1, Great Britain declares a virtual blockade of the German 

coast. 

75 



March 10, German auxiliary cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich runs the 
British blockade and later interns at Newport News, announcing the 
sinking of the American ship William P. Frye. 

March 18, British battleships Irresistible and Ocean and French battle- 
ship Bouvet sunk in Dardanelles. 

March 22, Russians capture the Galician fortress of Przemysl. 

March 23, Allied troops land at Gallipoli. 

March 25, Turks massacre American missionaries and other Christians 
to the number of 20,000 in Persia. Russia begins terriffic battle in the 
Carpathians and captures Lupkow Pass. 

March 27, French capture heights of Hartmanns-Weilerkopf. 

March 28, Germans torpedo British passenger steamship Falaba off 
South Wales, and 112 passengers are lost. 

April 5, America demands reparation from Germany for the sinking of 
the Frye. 

April 9, Germany agrees to compensate owners of the Frye. French 
capture Les Eparges, dominating the Woevre. 

April 11, German auxiliary cruiser Kronprinz Wilhelm arrives at 
Newport News, and later interns. 

April 12, German Ambassador von Bernstorflf, ignoring the government, 
calls on the American people to stop exporting arms and munitions to 
the Allies. 

May 2, Austria wins great victory over Russians in West Galicia. 

May 7, British liner Lusitania sunk without warning by German sub- 
marine off Kinsale, Ireland, entailing the loss of more than 1,200 persons, 
among whom were more than 100 Americans. Contrary to all international 
law, the German Ambassador had impudently warned Americans from 
sailing on this ship. 

May 8, Germans capture Libau, Russia. 

May 13, President Wilson sends stern note to Germany, demanding 
reparation for the loss of American lives on the Lusitania and demanding 
that submarine attacks on passenger vessels cease. 

May 22, Italy declares war on Austria. 

May 24, Italians invade Austria. 

May 31, Germany replies to American Lusitania note, and intimates 
that the vessel carried troops and munitions. Washington dissatisfied with 
the reply. 

June 2, Teutons recapture Przemysl, San Marino declares war on 
Austria. 

June 3, British advance in Mesopotamia and occupy Amara, Asiatic 
Turkey. 

June 9, William Jennings Bryan resigns as Secretary of State. 

June 10, President Wilson sends another vigorous note to Germany 
on the Lusitania matter and reiterates his demands for the observance of 
international law. 

June 14, General Mackensen begins drive against Russians. 

June 15, French airmen bomb Karlsruhe, in Baden. 

June 22, Teutons occupy Lemberg. 

June 30, Russians win naval battle in the Baltic Sea. 

July 5, United States refused to negotiate informally with Germany on 
its reply to the Lusitania notes. Government takes over German wireless 
station at Sayville, Long Island. British capture all of German Southwest 
Africa. 

76 



July 19, Greatest battle to date of the war begins in Russian Poland, 
with 6,000,000 men engaged and covering a front of 900 miles. Italians 
make big gains in Austria. 

August 4, British reply to American protest asserts that nation is acting 
strictly in accordance with international law, and expresses a willingness 
to submit disputed questions to arbitration. Germany asserts in note that 
sinking of the Frye was legal. 

August 5, Germans capture Warsaw, capital of Poland. 

August 10, Turkish army of 90,000 defeated by Russians in Armenia. 

August 14, German submarine sinks British transport Royal Edward, in 
the Aegean Sea, and 1,000 soldiers and sailors are lost. 

August 19, White Star liner Arabic sunk by German submarine ; 20 
lives lost. 

August 26, Germans occupy Russian fortress of Brest-Litovsk. 
September 1, Germany agrees to sink no more merchant ships without 
warning. 

September 10, President Wilson demands that Austria recall its Am- 
bassador, Dr. Dumba. 

September 22, Bulgaria orders her army mobilized. 

September 24, Greece orders the mobilization of her army and navy. 

September 25, Entente Allies begin big drive against Germans from 
North Sea to Verdun and take 20,000 prisoners. 

September 28, British smash German line at Loos. 

October 5, Germany disavows sinking of the Arabic and offers to pay 
indemnity. The United States demands of Turkey that massacre of Ar- 
menians cease. 

October 6, French and British troops land at Salonika. King Constan- 
tine dismisses Premier Venizelos. 

October 7, Austro-German invasion of Serbia begins. 

October 10, Bulgarians invade Serbia and declares war against her. 
Greece refuses aid to Serbia promised by treaty. 

October 15, Great Britain declares war on Bulgaria. 

October 16, France declares war on Bulgaria. 

October 19, Russia and Italy declare war on Bulgaria. 

November 6, Germans capture Nish, Serbia. 

November 8, Secretary Lansing tells Great Britain that blockade is 
illegal. 

December 1, British army in Mesopotamia driven back to Kut-el-Amara. 
America demands of Austria an explanation of the sinking of the Italian 
passenger liner Ancona. 

December 4, Henry Ford's peace ship sails. 

December 9, Germany announces the conquest of Serbia. 

December 16, Austria replying to the Ancona note, evades the issue. 

December 19, British withdraw army from the Gallipoli. 

December 23, America sends second note to Austria on the Ancona 
question. German reply to last Frye note is unsatisfactory. 

December 25, Henry Ford, ill, leaves peace party and starts for home. 

December 30, Austria yields in part on Ancona matter, agrees to punish 
submarine commander and admits American contention as to the safety 
of passengers. British passenger steamship Persia sunk without warning 
in the Mediterranean. R. M. McNeely, American Consul, and 200 others 
drown. 

77 



1916. 

January 7, Von Bernstorff agrees that no merchant ship shall be sunk 
until all passeners have been made safe and assures full satisfaction in 
the Persia incident. 

January 11, Germans begin big offensive in Champagne and are repulsed 
by the French. 

January 28, President Wilson asks all belligerents to agree to the dis- 
arming of merchant ships and to rules on submarine warfare. 

February 1, British steamship Appam, supposed to be lost, enters 
Norfolk harbor under a German prize crew. 

February 4, Germany refuses to admit the illegality of the Lusitania 
sinking. 

February 14, all single men in Great Britain called to the colors. 
February 23, Germans begin drive on Verdun. 

February 26, Germans take Fort Douaumont, of Verdun defenses, after 
suffering heavy losses. 

March 3, United States Senate tables Gore resolution warning Ameri- 
cans off armed merchantmen. 

March 4, French report loss of auxiliary cruiser Provence, with about 
3,000 soldiers. 

March 7, House of Representatives tables McLemore resolution warn- 
ing Americans off armed merchantmen. 

March 8, Germany declares war on Portugal. 
March 20, Allied airmen raid Zeebrugge. 

March 24, British steamship Sussex, with Americans on board, tor- 
pedoed. 

March 27, President Wilson demands explanation from Germany on 
the sinking of the Sussex. 

April 1, Zeppelin raid on England kills 28, injures 44. 

April 2, second Zeppelin raid on England kills 16 and wounds 100. 

April 4, new British budget, $9,000,000,000, largest in worlds' history. 

April 10, Germans start offensive near Verdun. 

April 11, Germany denies sinking the Sussex, but admits sinking sev- 
eral others, including the Eagle Point and Manchester Guardian. 

April 12, President Wilson sends ultimatum on Sussex to Germany and 
summons Congress to tell why. Russians capture Trebizond. 

April 19, Russian army lands at Marseilles. French begin offensive at 
Verdun. 

April 24, Irish rising in Dublin. Twelve persons killed. 

April 28, British garrison at Kut-el-Amara surrenders to Turkey. 

May 1, Irish rebellion ends. Leaders, including President Pearce, 
executed. 

May 5, Germany tells United States illegal U-boat methods will stop 
if the United States force Great Britain to raise her blockade. 

May 10, Germany admits sinking the Sussex. 

May 23, French make large gains in Verdun section. 

May 27, United States demands that Allies stop illegal seizure of mails. 

May 31, Sea battle off Jutland. British lose 14 ships; German losses 
heavy, but concealed. 

June 2, Russia begins new offensive against Austria. 

June 7, Earl Kitchener and staff lost when British cruiser Hampshire 
is sunk on the way to Russia. 

78 



June 11, Russians force Austrians back 25 miles on a lOO-mile front, 
taking 108,000 prisoners. 

June IS, Russians recapture Czernowitz. 

July 1, Allies begin grand oflfensive on both sides of the Somme and 
make large gains. 

July 5, General Foch captures second German system of fortified line 
on a 10-mile front and several towns. 

July 10, German merchant submarine Deutschland reaches Baltimore. 

July 12-14, British make substantial gains in France. 

July 22, Russians pierce von Hindenburg's line at several points and 
also drive Austrians back. 

August 1, German merchant submarine Deutschland leaves Baltimore 
for Germany. 

August 3, Sir Roger Casement hanged for treason. 

August 8, Italians capture Goritzia. 

August 9, Germans execute Captain Fryatt of the British steamship 
Brussels for an alleged attack on a submarine. 

August 23, Deutschland reaches Germany, completing the first round 
trip across the ocean of a submarine merchantman in the hisiory of the 
world. 

August 27, Rumania declares war on Austria and Germany declares war 
on Rumania. 

September 25, Allies capture Combles and Thiepval. 

October 7, the German war submarine U-53 reaches Newport, R. I. 

October 8, U-53 sinks five British and neutral steamships off Nantucket 
and survivors are rescued by American warships. 

October 12, Italians make new drive on Carso plateau. 

October 16, Entente powers recognize Greek Government set up by 
Venezelos, occupy Athens and take over navy and forts. 

October 29, British steamship Marina, with 50 Americans on board, 
sunk without warning. 

November 1, German merchant submarine Deutschland reaches New 
London, Connecticut. latlians begin new offensive against Austrians and 
take 15.000 prisoners. 

November 8, American steamship Columbian attacked by German sub- 
marine. 

November 21, Emperor Francis Joseph, of Austria, dies. 

November 22, Germans sink British Hospital Ship Brittanic. Fifty lives 
lost. 

December 6, Austro-Germans capture Bucharest. 

December 11, Deutschland reaches Bremen. 

December 12, Germany and her allies propose peace. 

December 14, Entente Allies demand reparation, restitution and security 
for the future. 

December 21, President Wilson tells Europe America has been brought 
to the verge of war and demands peace terms as a basis for future 
conduct. 

1917. 

January 9, Allies reply to President Wilson, giving peace terms. 

January 22. President Wilson tells Senate peace without victory neces- 
sary if United States enters league to enforce peace. 

February 1. Germany declares U-boat blockade and says that all neutral 
ships entering defined zone will be sunk without warning. 

79 



February 3, the United States severes diplomatic relations with Ger- 
many. Federal officers seize German liner Kronprinzessin Cecile. Ameri- 
can steamship Housatonic sunk near Scilly Islands by submarine. 

February 10, British passenger steamship California sunk without 
warning; forty-six drown. 

February 26, President Wilson asks Congress for authority to use 
armed forces to protect American rights and shipping. Cunard liner La- 
conia torpedoed, and three Americans were killed. 

March 1, State Department reveals German plot to induce Mexico and 
Japan to invade the United States. 

March 7, the President decides to arm merchant ships in spite of 
Congress' refusal to approve. 

March 12, President Wilson notifies nations armed guard will protect 
American ships. British capture Bagdad. 

March 14, American steamship Algonquin torpedoed without warning. 
Russian revolution announced in Petrograd. Czar dethroned. 

March 17, British take Bapaume. 

March 24. Massachusetts National Guard called out. 

March 29, British defeat 20,000 Turks in Palestine. 

April 2, President Wilson calls on Congress to declare a state of war 
with Germany. 

April 4, Senate votes for war, 82 to 6. 

April 6, House passes war resolution, Z72) to 50, and President Wilson 
issues proclamation of war with Germany. German ships in American 
ports seized. 

April 9, Austria severed diplomatic relations with the United States. 
British break German lines and capture Vimy Ridge. Brazil severs diplo- 
matic relations with Germany. 

April 10, Eddystone munitions works explosion causes 150 deaths. 

April 21, British mission headed by Foreign Secretary Balfour lands in 
the United States. 

April 24, French mission with Marshal Joflfre lands in the United 
States. 

May 2, American steamship Rockingham sunk by submarine. 

May 5, Secretary Balfour addresses Congress. 

May 11, President Wilson names American commission, headed by 
Elihu Root, to Russia. 

May 12, British smash Hindenburg line from Arras to Bullecourt. 

May 14, First American Liberty Loan, for $2,000,000,000 started. 

May 18, National Guard called into Federal service to mobilize July 
15. The President signs the draft bill calling into service men from 21 
to 30 years. 

June 5, Registration for the draft takes place. 

June 6, British capture Messines-Wytschaete salient in greatest mining 
operation. 

June 8, Major-General John J. Pershing, American commander, reaches 
England. 

June 13, General Pershing arrives in Paris. 

June 14, First Liberty Loan oversubscribed. 

June 26, First American troops arrive in France. 

July 13, First draft of 687,000 men called to colors. 

July 17, Von Bethmann Hollweg, German Chancellor, resigns. 

July 25, Austro-Germans capture Stanislau, Tarnopol and Nodvorna, 
Galicia, and Russians are in full retreat. 

80 



August 13, Greece definitely at war with Central Powers. 

August 14, Pope Benedict proposes peace. 

August 29, President Wilson tells the Pope no peace can be signed with 
the present German Government. 

September 3, German aircraft raid Chatham, England, killing 108 
British sailors in barracks. 

September 7, German airmen bomb American hospitals in France, 

killing three persons. 

September 12, Argentine dismisses German Minister Luxburg owing to 
American disclosures of his activities. 

September 15, First American drafted men start for camp. 

September 16, Kerensky declares Russian republic. 

September 20, State Department reveals that Bernstorff had asked 
German Government for $50,000 to influence Congress. 

September 24, Secretary Lansing discloses German plot to spread dis- 
ease in Rumania by means of microbes. 

October 1, Second Liberty Loan drive, for $3,000,000, begun. 

October 4, British make gains in Flanders. 

October 16, Sedition and arson sweep the United States and there are 
numerous fires and explosions in war industries. 

October 20, Two German raiders in North Sea destroy nine merchant 
ships and two destroyers. American transport Antilles sunk by submarine 
and 70 lives are lost. 

October 23, German Chancellor Michaelis resigns. 

October 25, Italians driven back across the Isonzo. 

October 27, First American shot fired at Germans by an artilleryman. 

October 28, Americans capture their first war prisoner. 

October 30, Italian army in full retreat. 

November 1, British capture Beersheba, Palestine. Kerensky announces 
that Russia is tired of war, and that the Allies must assume the burden. 

November 3, First Americans taken prisoner by Germans. 

November 6, New American-Japanese agreement guaranteeing open 
door and integrity of China announced. 

November 7, British capture Gaza, Palestine. 

November 8. Kerensky deposed. 

November 10, Lenine announced as Premier of Russia by Bolsheviki. 
Trotzky Foreign Minister. Bolsheviki demand immediate peace. 

November 19, American destroyer Chauncey sunk. 

November 21, British use tanks in attack on Hindenburg line on a 
32-mile front. 

November 24, Bolsheviki begin peace negotiations with Central Powers. 

December 4, President Wilson asserts Prussian military masters must 
be crushed and asks Congress to declare war on Austria. 

December 5, Rumania forced to accept a German peace. 

December 6, explosion on French munitions ship at Halifax kills 1,500 
persons, injures thousands, destroys thousands of buildings and renders 
20,000 persons homeless. American destroyer Jacob Jones sunk, 60 lives 
lost. 

December 10, British capture Jerusalem. 

December 27, Germany oflfers peace on basis of no annexations and 
no indemnities. 

December 28, American Government takes over the railroads. 

81 



1918. 

January 8, President Wilson states war aims. 

January 15, American Government submits evidence that former French 
Premier Caillaux was involved with Bolo Pasha in a conspiracy to spread 
German propaganda. 

January 17, Harry A. Garfield, Fuel Administrator, orders all factories 
except war plants closed for five days, and all mercantile establishments 
to close on 11 successive Mondays. 

January 19, American troops take over Toul sector. 

January 23, Austrians retreat on a wide front west of the Piave. 

January 31, nation-wide strikes in Germany. 

February 7, British transport Tuscania, carrying American troops, tor- 
pedoed off Irish coast. One hundred and seventy lives lost. 

February 9, Ukraine signs peace with Germany and Austria. 

February 11, Bolsheviki declare war at an end and order troops to 
disband. 

February 19, Germans resume invasion of Russia and occupy Dvinsk. 

February 21, British in Palestine capture Jericho. 

March 2, American troops repulse Germans in Toul sector and along 
Chemin des Dames. 

March 3, Bolsheviki sign an abject peace with Teutonic nations. 

March 9, Rumania makes peace with Bolsheviki. 

March 11, Secretary of War Baker reaches Paris. Austrian airmen 
bombard Naples and German airmen bomb Paris, killing 100 persons in 
the latter city. Americans raid German trenches. 

March 12, sixty German airmen raid Paris, causing 179 casualties. 

March 14, German troops occupy Odessa. 

March 21, British begin big drive on 59-mile front from Arras to St. 
Quentin. 

March 23, Paris bombarded by long range gun. 

March 25, Germans capture Peronne and Bapaume. American engi- 
neers aid in opposing them. 

March 28, British report destruction of entire Turkish army in the Hit 
area, Mesopotamia. General Foch named generalissimo of Allied forces. 
April 5, French repulse massed German attack in Montdidier sector. 

April 10, Americans enter Picardy and help beat Germans back from 
Amiens. 

April 15, Germans take Messines Ridge and Balleul. 

April 21, German picked troops penetrate American sector, but are 
driven back. 

April 23, British naval forces raid Zeebrugge and Ostend, block harbor 
by sinking cement-laden vessels and destroy lock gates. 

April 24, first half million Americans in France. 

April 26, Germans capture Kemmel Hill. 

April 30, France bestows war medal on 122 Massachusetts soldiers for 
valor. 

May 1, alien enemy property taken over by United States Government 
announced as $280,000,000 to date. 

May 2, Secretary Baker asks Congress for permission to raise an un- 
limited number of troops. 

May 4, President Wilson commutes death sentence of four American 
soldiers. 

May 11, National army men parade in London before King George. 

82 



May 19, Major Lufbury, American Ace, killed in air battle. 

May 21, General Peyton C. March made Chief of Staff of the American 
Army. 

May 22, German airmen raid Allied hospitals, killing several hundred. 

May 23, British transport Moldavia sunk, 53 American soldiers drown. 
Germany releases a million Russian prisoners, reduced to skeletons, and 
most of them suffering from tuberculosis. 

May 25, Mexico severs relations with Cuba. Costa Rica declares war 
on Germany. 

May 27, Germans breach Allied line between Soissons and Rheims, 

May 28, Americans capture Cantigny. 

June 1, French counter-attack and recover much ground. 

June 3, German submarines sink steamship and five schooners off 
American coast. 

June 4, Americans and French hurl Germans back in Chateau-Thierry 
region. 

June 6, Great German drive on Paris stopped by Americans at Chateau- 
Thierry. 

June 11, American Marines capture Belleau Wood. 

June 20, Americans arrive in Italy. 

July 1, One million American soldiers in France. American troops 
land in Russia. 

July 18, Marshal Foch begins great counter offensive. 

July 22, Americans and French capture Chateau-Thierry. 

July 28, Sixty-ninth New York Regiment crosses the Ourcq. 

August 4, Ame'-icans take Fismes. 

August 10, Americans in Somme region capture Morlancourt. 

August 24, 1,500,000 American soldiers in France. 

August 31, American- and British recapture Mount Kemmel in Flan- 
ders. 

September 1, Americans in Belgium take Koormezeele. 

September 6, Americans join British in Cambrai-St. Quentin drive. 

September 12, American First Army wipes out St. Mihiel salient in 
twenty-seven hours, taking 15,000 pri'-"»ners and reducing the battle line 
tenty miles. 

September 29, Americans rip the Hindenburg line. 

September 29, Bulgaria surrenders unconditionally to the Allies. 

October 3, King Ferdinand of Bulgaria abdicates in favor of Crown 
Prince Boris. American First Army begins an offensive from the Ar- 
gonne Forest to the Meuse and advances to the Kriemhilde line. 

October 6, Germany, through Prince Max, the Chancellor, asks Presi- 
dent Wilson to make peace move on basis of the President's conditions. 

October 8, President Wilson asks Prince Max hether he speaks for the 
former Government or a new one. 

October 12, Germany agrees to all of the President's peace terms as 
annonuced in January. 

October 14, President Wilson replies, denying an armistice as long as 
Germany persists in illegal practices. 

October 15, 2,000,000 American soldiers overseas. 

October 19, The President rejects Austria's peace proposal on old terms. 

October 21, Germany makes new armistice proposal and denies atro- 
cities. 

83 



October 24, President Wilson demands of Germany full surrender. 

October 28, Germany replies that it awaited armistice proposals which 
would lead to a just peace. Austria accepts all the President's terms and 
asks for a separate peace. 

October 30, Turkey unconditionally surrenders to the Allies. 

November 1, King Boris of Bulgaria abdicates. Government taken 
over by the people. 

November 3, Austria accepts all terms and unconditionally surrenders. 

November 6, Secretary Lansing notifies Germany that Marshal Foch is 
authorized by the Allied Governments to receive German envoys and state 
terms of an armistice. 

November 7, Americans capture Sedan. False report that peace had 
been signed leads to wild country-wide celebration. 

November 8, German peace envoys enter the French lines and meet 
Marshal Foch. 

November 9 — Kaiser Wilhelm II. of Germany abdicates, and his eldest 
son and heir to the throne renounces all rights thereto. 

November 10— Revolution spreads through all Germany. Former 
Kaiser and Crown Prince flee to Holland. 

November 11 — State Department at Washington announces, at 2:45 
A. M. that the armistice had been signed at midnight. THE GREAT 
WORLD WAR ENDED AT 6 A. M. (Washington time). 



WORLD PEACE TREATY SIGNED IN VERSAILLES 



GERMANS FIRST, THEN PRESIDENT WILSON 

LEADS ASSOCIATED POWERS WITH PEN 

STROKES FORMALLY ENDING WAR. 



Giant Jet of Water From Mammoth Fountains of 

Historic Chateau at Versailles Signals Vast 

Concourse That Greatest Conflict Is Over. 



VERSAILLES, JUNE 28, 1919.— THE WORLD WAR WAS FOR- 
MALLY ENDED TODAY BY THE SIGNLNG OF THE PEACE 
TREATY WITH GERMANY. 

THE EPOCHAL MEETING IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS BE- 
GAN AT 3:10 P. M., AND THE GERMAN DELEGATES. THE 
FIRST TO SIGN, AFFIXED THEIR SIGNATURES AT 3:13. THEY 
WERE FOLLOWED BY THE AMERICAN DELEGATES, HEADED 
BY PRESIDENT WILSON, AND THEN BY THE PLENIPOTEN- 
TIARIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. FRANCE, ITALY AND JAPAN. 
THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE MINOR POWERS SIGNED 
IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER. 

CHINA'S DELEGATES DID NOT ATTEND THE SESSION 
DECLINING TO SIGN THE TREATY BECAUSE THEY WERE 
NOT PERMITTED TO MAKE RESERVATIONS. 



84 



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